


but, at least

by thesemovingparts



Series: if we make it through december [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (he's 20 though let him live), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Christmas, College Student Peter Parker, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Ned Leeds Dies, Off-Screen Car Accident, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Underage Drinking, i adore him and promise he is a constant presence in this story, in this house we explore the realities of grief without disrespecting the great name of ned leeds, non-graphic vomit, off-screen sex, taking the parts of canon that work for this story and ignoring the rest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:26:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesemovingparts/pseuds/thesemovingparts
Summary: “He was always less of a degenerate than the two of us," MJ said fondly.“Who’s gonna keep us in check now?” Peter aimed for sarcasm and missed by a mile, hitting somewhere closer to heartbroken instead.“I guess we’ll just have to step up for each other.”“Okay.”*Ned Leeds passed away two days before Christmas and two days since Peter last saw him. Now Peter has to figure out how to survive the pull of grief in a brand new arena-- young adulthood.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: if we make it through december [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065605
Comments: 100
Kudos: 165





	but, at least

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written for the MCU before, I've never even spent really any time in MCU circles so go easy on me when I ignore and change canon, please. It's been ages since I've posted fic and this is the first thing I've been able to both start and finish in well over a year, so thanks quarantine for the unexpected spider-man deep dive I guess?
> 
> Thank you for stopping by, I know this is far from perfect and a bit disjointed in places, but I appreciate you giving it a chance nonetheless <3
> 
> Love, Becca

_“Can I sit next to you?”_

_“Oh. Sure.”_

_“What’s your name?”_

_“Peter.”_

_“Are you new here?”_

_“No.”_

_“Oh, cool! My family just moved here. Do you know anyone else?”_

_“No. I don’t-- have any friends.”_

_“That’s okay, I’ll be your friend!”_

_“I… Okay.”_

_“We can figure this place out together.”_

_“That sounds nice.”_

_“My name’s Ned Leeds, it’s nice to meet you.”_

*

“Full disclosure, I feel bad saying this to you--” Peter said at full volume, door slamming against the wall as he burst inside. “But thank _fuck_ I’m done, dude.” 

“Dude!” Ned held a hand to his chest, clutching at pearls he wasn’t wearing in a display of shock so dramatic Peter would’ve thought it was fake had he not known Ned Leeds so painfully well. “I’m too hopped up on caffeine for this shit. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“I’m hopped up on both caffeine and _freedom_ and I will not be contained!” Peter let the front door slam shut behind him, dropped his backpack, and his coat in the entryway and strode across the tiny living room of their tiny apartment to get to their tiny kitchen. 

“You should feel guilty about saying that straight to my face,” Ned huffed, looking dejectedly at the strewn-about notes on the coffee table in front of him, his half-dead laptop and full-dead cup of coffee. 

“Oh, you poor, sad soul,” Peter poured a fresh mug of coffee from the pot on the counter. “Stuck with a Friday afternoon final. I pity you,” he shoved a two-day-old muffin in his mouth and sat himself down across from Ned on the floor, coffee table of academia between them, and set the cup of coffee down directly in front of his friend. 

“As you should,” Ned grumbled before gratefully accepting the coffee and taking a long sip. Peter grinned at him through banana-nut teeth. “When are you leaving?”

“I told the Starks I could be there tonight, but I don’t mind staying if you want the company.” 

“No, dude,” Ned shook his head. “Get out of here. You should embrace every second of your break; enjoy your stupid freedom while you’ve got it.”

“Are you sure?” Peter lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve got lots of present wrapping I can do.”

“You wrapped all your presents when you were procrastinating that research paper.”

Peter scowled at him, caught out. “Okay, sure, but it’s still not a big deal if you want me to hang around.” 

“Peter, I swear to God,” Ned laughed. “You being here is just going to distract me and I _really_ need to study for this thing,” he motioned to piles of notes between them. 

Peter sighed, heavy and melodramatic and just enough to get a proper snort out of Ned. 

“ _Fine,”_ he said. “But I’m gonna miss you.”

“You’re a sap,” Ned said. “Having a big, happy family has made you sappy.” 

Peter got up on his knees and reached across the coffee table to hold Ned’s face tight in both hands. 

“I’m just a guy, sitting in front of another guy, asking him to hang out with him on New Year’s… because that’s as long as I can go before the codependency sets in,” he implored in his best Julia Roberts impression, big eyes and furrowed brow and the whole nine yards. 

“Bro, if you think I’m missing out on _Operation: Crash an Avengers Party and Get Drunk Near Captain America_ you’re fooling yourself,” Ned replied with just as much vigor as he’d had at sixteen years old on his first visit to Avengers Tower. 

Peter grinned at him, absorbed the moment with their twin sets of finals-induced eye bags and unwashed sweatshirts, and thanked whoever was in charge that he and Ned Leeds kept getting to grow in the same direction. 

All these years and still counting. 

*

Toothbrush?

_Check._

Festive pajamas?

_Check._

Tupperware full of cookies from Tony’s favorite college-era bakery?

_Check minus one._

“If you don’t leave soon, you’ll hit traffic and won’t be here in time for Christmas dinner.”

“It’s December twenty-second,” Peter laughed, stuffing haphazardly chosen outfits into his bag without paying much attention to what he was grabbing. 

“My point exactly,” Tony’s snark was evident even on speaker phone, somewhere underneath a pile of dirty socks. “Christmas is a month-long event in this house and you’re already twenty-two days late.”

“I’m heading out in fifteen,” Peter said with unbothered exasperation. “Maybe even ten if you leave me alone long enough to finish packing.”

“You sure you’re good to drive?” Tony asked. “Not too tired?” 

“I promise. I took a nice long nap during my BioChem exam this morning,” Peter deadpanned. “By the way, did I mention I’ve flunked out and plan to move to Florida and become an acrobat for Cirque du Soleil? The one at Disney.”

“I know you’re joking,” Tony said. “But that’s too detailed a backup plan for you to have not thought about it.” 

Peter cackled and zipped up his bag. 

*

“I’m leaving my leftover pizza in the fridge for you,” Peter said as he pulled on his coat, searching without luck for his keys. “And don’t forget to take the trash out before you leave because if we get bugs in this place our collective families will never let us live it down.” 

“I _know_ , Peter,” Ned pulled Peter’s keys out from underneath one of his binders and chucked them across the room without warning. Peter caught them. “Text me when you get to the house, yeah?”

“‘Course. You too,” Peter said as he slung his final bag over his shoulder, the rest already packed into the trunk of his car. “Good luck tomorrow, dude.”

“Merry Christmas-- give Morgan a hug from me!” 

“Will do!” Peter called over his shoulder as he stepped across the threshold. “Love you, bye!”

The door fell shut behind him. 

*

The front door of the lake house swung open before Peter had even locked his car behind him, revealing an exuberant eight-year-old with untied boots and a coat hanging on by one sleeve as she raced across the yard to meet him. 

“Peter!”

He dropped the bag he was holding on the ground and crouched down just in time to catch her in his arms. 

“Morgan!” he lifted her up in the air and let her wrap her legs around his middle, holding on tight. “This is half a hug from me and half a hug from Ned who says hello.”

“Tell Ned I say _helloooooooo,”_ she replied enthusiastically. 

“Yeah? How many O’s is that?” 

She thought about it sincerely for a moment and then, with a nod: “Thirty-four.” 

“You know what? I think that’s the perfect number of O’s,” Peter nodded sagely. 

“Is that your Santa bag?” Morgan asked, pointing towards his feet. 

“My Santa bag is securely locked up in the car to keep little gremlin hands and eyes off of it,” Peter said, making a show of locking his car twice more before sliding his key into his pocket. Morgan pouted. “But this is an even more exciting bag.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” Peter said as he held Morgan with one arm and hefted the bag over his shoulder with the other. “It’s an age old college tradition.”

“What’s in it?” she grinned and bounced in his arms. 

“Dirty laundry.” 

*

“Three whole semesters down,” Tony said over the stove. “Remember when you thought you wouldn’t make it through one?”

“I’ve been here for twenty minutes,” Peter deadpanned from the kitchen island a few feet away. “Are we already into sap hours?” 

“Don’t misunderstand me there, kid. This is my _I told you so_ moment more than anything,” Tony fired back. 

“Oh right,” Peter laughed. “My mistake.”

“So, fill me in, what’s new at my alma mater?” Tony asked. 

“Am I doing this right?” Peter stopped his task of chopping onions and furrowed his brow at them. The last time he’d tried to cook anything that didn’t spend its shelf life in the freezer had been, well, the last time he’d been to visit the lake house. 

“You’re fine,” Tony responded without looking at him. “Is there a wrong way to chop onions?”

“Well, you weren’t specific.” 

“I asked you to chop them, do you need more guidance than that?” 

Tony finally abandoned his post over a simmering pot and glanced over Peter’s shoulder, scowling at four neat piles of different chopping styles. 

“Did I do it wrong?” he asked with a barely contained grin. 

“You really enjoy being a nuisance don’t you?” Tony said flatly. “Like our own personal poltergeist every time you come to visit with the full meals at midnight and chopping my onions like a freak.” 

“You missed me so much,” Peter said fondly as he chopped the larger pieces of onions down to a more uniformly diced pile. 

“Less and less with every passing moment,” Tony said. “But you can win me back by telling me what’s new with you-- New friends? _Ex_ friends? What classes you’re taking next?” 

“Can’t we wait until May gets here so I only have to do the interrogation once?” Peter groaned. 

“You think I can wait a full--” Tony checked his watch. “Forty-two _hours_ to get an update on your crazy college life? Not likely, kid.” 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Peter brushed him off, but was unable to keep a quietly fond smile off his face. “Cliff’s notes?” 

“Hit me with ‘em.” 

*

Peter read to Morgan before she went to sleep, tucked up with her in her twin bed and surrounded on all sides by soft yellow light. It was a collection of Shel Silverstein poems, one that had once belonged to Peter, long before Iron Man was a reality much less the version of Tony that had invited Peter into his home and life and family. 

When Peter first found himself rematerializing in the world, having lost five years and any stability he had once held, he found it difficult to put his feet back on the ground. There was an unbelonging clinging to his skin, making him flail about in search of what his space was in the new world. 

Morgan Stark was difficult for him to look at, because Morgan Stark was living, breathing proof that he had been gone, entirely and completely. So, it took a few months before Peter could properly rationalize her existence with his own, but once he did he fell in love. 

The Shel Silverstein book was the first gift he ever gave her, on her fifth birthday, scared out of his mind that she would reject it and tangentially him. It was a peace offering in the shape of well-loved pages and worn-down corners and the name _Morgan H. Stark_ penned into the front cover directly below a chicken-scratched _Peter B. Parker._

As it turned out, Peter had no reason to be worried. 

Morgan had loved him since before she’d ever met him. 

*

That night, he slept well and listened to the soft, muffled sound of falling snow on the roof outside his bedroom window. 

His life had felt peaceful for so long that he took it for granted. 

*

The following day was more of the same, with Christmas movies playing on a loop in the background and Morgan dragging Peter from one game to one Lego set to one craft project and back again in similar fifteen minute shifts to how he completed assignments back at school. Chaotic and exhausting, but more interesting in the long run. 

Ned texted Peter after he finished his last final. _Guess who's free now bitch!!!!_ he wrote, with a series of barely relevant gifs that Peter responded to with equally exuberant emojis and ultimately turned into a nonverbal meme-off periodically for the rest of the day. 

Peter helped Morgan build a snow fort in the yard by packing bricks of snow into plastic bins and then carving out windows and alcoves where her Polly Pockets and Lego people could stand sentry side by side. Peter pulled out his 35mm Minolta that he’d found thrifting so they could memorialize the accomplishment. 

They only trudged back inside when it was time to dry off and eat dinner ( _in that order, Parker)_ and by the time the four of them were situated on the floor of the living room with a one thousand piece puzzle and a Christmas movie, Peter was beat. 

Apparently, so was Morgan, who fell asleep in a pile of green pieces and would certainly wake up with puzzle shapes pressed into her cheek. Peter pulled out his phone, deciding it was a moment worth documenting, and was distracted momentarily by a missed message from Ned. 

_Heading home now! Text you when I get there_

Peter sent back a quick thumbs up and a sparkly heart in response. He returned to his previous course of action and snapped his photo of Morgan, feeling his heart give a little swoop of pride at having the honor of calling her family. It reminded him of a certain text he had forgotten to send earlier in the day. 

_PS gave Mo a hug from you_

_She says helloooooo_

Ned was busy driving, but Peter knew it would be a nice message to arrive home to. It always was for him, anyway. 

*

“Do you have any exciting plans for your break?” Pepper asked after Morgan had been taken to bed, handing Tony a cup of tea, black and oversteeped just the way he liked it. 

“Nothing too crazy,” Peter said. “I might head back to the city a day or two before you guys to get some patrol time in.”

“You’ll have plenty of time after the New Year before you go back to school, kid,” Tony said. 

“I know, I just,” Peter shook his head. “The holidays are hard on a lot of people. I wanna do what I can.”

Peter could feel Tony’s gaze on him soften, even without looking up from the pile of blue pieces spread out before him. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Just don’t disappear on us the minute you get back to Queens.” 

“And there are a lot of people that will want to be seeing you,” Pepper piped in. 

“Oh, I promised Ned we’d go to the New Year’s party so I’ll definitely be around,” Peter laughed. 

“You better be,” Tony said. 

Peter snapped two more pieces into place. 

*

The phone call happened like this. 

It was past one o’clock in the morning and Peter was scrolling aimlessly through Twitter on his phone in the dark because he was a College Kid now and didn’t have a Bedtime, when all that security, all that warmth, and all that comfort came to an abrupt halt with a message from Abigail Leeds. 

_Call me as soon as you get this_

_It’s important._

Peter sat up straight in bed and felt his heart pick up the pace of its own accord, as if it knew something he didn’t, as if it and little Abby Leeds were in on something together. His instinct was to text Ned, but when he pulled up their text thread he realized his final message hung there unread and unanswered. 

_PS gave Mo a hug from you_

_She says helloooooo_

It felt more than ominous by that point, it felt _bad,_ and Peter blamed the growing panic in his chest for the brief millisecond of consideration he gave to ignoring the message altogether and dealing with it in the morning. 

But he couldn’t do that, he knew he couldn’t. Peter wasn’t just a superhero, he was Ned Leeds’ best friend and it was his job to be there when he needed him. 

Ring. 

Ring. 

Ring. 

“Abby?”

“Peter,” her voice cracked. “ _Peter,_ oh my God.”

Abigail Leeds was crying. 

*

_Peter Parker’s first friend was a stuffed rabbit named Ears._

_They met when Peter’s aunt and uncle came to visit him on the first day he lived on Earth._

_Peter Parker’s second friend was a boy named Ned Leeds._

_They met on the third day of third grade when Peter forgot his lunch money at home and Ned cut his peanut butter sandwich in half to share._

*

He stared at the pattern of his comforter for seven minutes after he hung up the phone. Seven minutes of blank, dissociated, _this can’t be happening_ silence. 

Somewhere at the back of Peter’s mind, he wondered why he hadn’t started crying yet. But, then again, the surface tension in his sealed bedroom was holding tight, tight, tight enough to fill his ears with staticky white noise, so maybe if he stayed there forever he could avoid the breakdown entirely. 

His phone buzzed, alerting him that it was at twenty percent and falling though, so he pulled himself up out of bed and plugged it in at the desk on the other side of the room. He couldn’t feel the carpet under his feet, but he could feel how thirsty he was, so he pushed himself out of the door, past the edge of his bubble and down the stairs to the kitchen. 

One foot after the other. One shaky breath after the other. 

And then another. And just one more. 

“I knew you didn’t go to bed that early,” Tony’s voice filtered in from the living room as Peter pulled a glass out of the cabinet above the sink. “Come in here when you’re done getting your midnight snack-- I need an extra set of Santa hands to wrap this stuff.” 

Peter didn’t respond, couldn’t feel his tongue let alone open his mouth as he tried to hold his hands steady enough to fill a glass with water from the sink. 

He held it, and he stared at it, and he tried against all odds to remember what exactly he was supposed to do with it. 

“Pete?” _Tony._ Closer now. 

Peter set down the glass carefully on the counter beside the sink and turned to look at Tony, mouth working as if he was trying to say something and trying not to all at the same time. 

“Hey, you alright?” Tony took a step forward and Peter took a step back, letting his spine dig into the granite as his lungs worked overtime. 

“I-- Um--” Peter looked somewhere to the left of Tony’s shoulder and furrowed his brow. “Abby-- She, um, she called-- She called me… Abby Leeds?” 

“Kid, what happened?” Tony asked, and Peter couldn’t even feel the concern slowly drowning the kitchen because his spine was pressed up against the granite counter and he couldn’t breathe and--

“Ned was in a car accident,” he spit out, really only beginning to truly process it as he said it. “He’s-- he’s-- He was in an accident and he died.” 

If Peter’s vision hadn’t gone entirely fuzzy in that moment, if he hadn’t basically checked out from the world altogether, he might have noticed the way that Tony’s face fell and his posture changed from _Dad wrapping presents late at night_ to _There’s a problem and I don’t know how to solve it_ in point five seconds flat. 

“Oh, Peter,” he stepped forward as Peter’s body forced out a ragged sob, covering his mouth with a shaking hand as if he hadn’t any control over the sound he just expelled. He didn’t feel like he did anyway. 

“Come here,” Tony said, already wrapping Peter’s trembling form in his arms, one hand on his back and one where his skull met his spine. “I’m so sorry; I’m so sorry, Pete.” 

Peter sobbed into his right hand and clutched his own shirt with his left and grappled with a pang of grief so old and so familiar and so unbearably unending that he thought his lungs might burst. He could distantly feel Tony’s presence, his arms strong and unyielding holding Peter up, and he could hear what sounded like a twisted up, wrung out version of his own voice gasping out pleas of _I don’t know what to do-I don’t know what to-I don’t know-I don’t-I don’t-I don’t--_

“Breathe, Peter,” Tony said against his temple. “I’ve got you, we’ll figure it out, I’ve _got you.”_

Peter latched onto Tony where they stood, dug the bridge of his nose into Tony’s sternum and hummed in frustration at his own inability to catch his breath. Ned was gone, he was gone and Peter had seen him a day and a half ago and he was _gone._

Neither one of them heard the pad of little feet down the steps. 

“Daddy? Is Peter okay?”

“Hey, Morguna,” Tony moved a hand to run a thumb across Peter’s temple and block his face from curious eyes. “Go get Mom for me, would you?”

Morgan nodded succinctly and hurried back up the stairs. Peter gathered himself in a sudden moment of coherency and pushed away from Tony. 

He ran a hand over his eyes, his cheeks, under his nose with frantic and unsteady movement and took in a few gulps of oxygen. Tony just watched, hands up as if he was afraid Peter might collapse at any moment. 

“I need a glass-- glass of water,” Peter managed to stutter out before stumbling back to the counter and taking a few sips from the glass he’d left there. He sniffed hard and rubbed a sleeve over his entire face and couldn’t look at Tony. “ _Fuck,”_ he gasped as a shaky breath escaped him of its own accord. 

“Kiddo, is there anything I can do right now?” Tony begged, just as Pepper hurried down the stairs and into the room sans Morgan. 

“Oh, Peter,” she breathed upon seeing him. “Honey…?”

“Ned Leeds died tonight,” Tony explained under his breath, forcing another choked sound from Peter.

“Oh my God,” Pepper’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of them and _goddammit_ Peter couldn’t look at her either. 

“I need to-- Um, I promised Abby that I would--” Peter pressed onwards, had to keep pressing onwards. “I’m gonna call MJ so she doesn’t find out from-- Facebook or some shit.”

“Okay,” Tony nodded. 

“And May too,” he continued. “I have to tell May but she’s supposed to-- to drive here tomorrow and I don’t think it’s safe, I don’t want her driving if she’s-- right after she hears this, I don’t want--”

“Happy can drive the both of them,” Tony cut off his spiral. “I’ll make sure of it.” 

“Okay,” Peter nodded to himself. “Okay, yeah, that’s good… I left my phone upstairs.”

“I’ll go grab it,” Tony said, and for all of Peter’s _not there-ness_ he could hear the eagerness to help in some barely tangible way so he just hummed in agreement. “I’ll be right back, okay? Just take a beat.” 

Peter slid down into a crouch on the tile as soon as Tony rounded the corner, and Pepper came to join him. One of the most powerful CEOs in the world, crouched on the floor with Peter Parker in her pajamas in the early hours of Christmas Eve. 

“Do you know what happened?” she asked softly. 

“I don’t know, Abby just said-- there was an accident, but I’m not sure-- I don’t know what happened except that he’s dead--”

“It’s okay, we can figure it out later,” Pepper said in a voice that told Peter _she_ was going to figure it out no matter what it took. “For now, how about we sit somewhere a bit more comfortable to make these calls?”

She rested a gentle hand on Peter’s upper arm and guided him smoothly up and towards the couch where his knees gave out and he sank into the cushions, pushing hair out of his face and scratching at his scalp with shorn down nails. 

Pepper sat down on the coffee table across from him, didn’t try to touch him or hold him or comfort him, but instead just offered the support of companionship, of _not being alone._

_*_

_“Ned! Your mom is here to pick you up!”_

_“Nooooo.”_

_“We haven’t even finished this level yet, Peter.”_

_“Maybe if we hide under the bed for long enough they’ll leave us alone?”_

_“You’re a genius.”_

_“And then you can just stay forever!”_

_“Forever and ever!”_

*

Peter managed to hold himself together through two consecutive phone calls pretty goddamn well if he did say so himself. But, then again, considering he had been sobbing incoherently mere minutes earlier, his bar was pretty low. 

Tony sat on the couch next to him and Pepper remained across from him and he didn’t look at either one, kept a hand securely attached to his eyelids so as to not break down at the sight of their second-hand grief. 

He almost lost it when May started to cry and almost lost it again when MJ said _this isn’t a funny joke, Parker._ (She didn’t break down when he explained to her that this was _real, MJ, I swear to God_ but she did get off the phone suspiciously quickly. Peter didn’t blame her, but he did briefly wish she was closer.) 

“Do you think you can go to bed? Get some rest?” Tony asked once it was all over and just beginning. 

“I don’t want to go to my room,” Peter said. The _I don’t want to be alone_ might as well have been carved into his forehead. 

“Alright,” Tony said. “We can do that.” 

Peter laid down on the couch. 

He wondered who was punishing him. 

*

_“You’ve never seen Star Wars? You have to come over so we can watch it, it’s so cool.”_

_“My Uncle Ben says Star Trek is better.”_

_“I’ve never seen Star Trek! We can watch both.”_

*

He felt like he stayed awake for the rest of the night, but must have fallen asleep for a few minutes somewhere along the line because he found himself rousing on the couch to sunlight reflecting off the snow on the windowsill and hushed voices in the kitchen.

_“Should I wake Petey up so we can give him breakfast?”_

_“That’s very thoughtful, Mo, but we’re going to let him sleep a little longer, okay?”_

Peter turned on his side and buried his face in the back of the couch, taking stock of his body. He knew, from experience, that it was always after the first sleep that the grief decided where it was going to sit for the foreseeable future. When his parents had died, it had settled into his gut and he hadn’t been able to keep a meal down for longer than he cared to remember. After Ben, Peter had so much tension in his shoulders that the soreness of it had kept him up at all hours of the night. 

And now, as he pressed the bridge of his nose into the cushions, he discovered a tension in his sinuses that hadn’t been there before, an ache right behind his eyes that made him want to keep them shut and keep himself shut off from the rest of the world. 

Peter took a deep breath and decided to face it. He opened his eyes. 

Someone had left his phone to charge on the coffee table, so he reached over and grabbed it, feeling his headache only grow at the sight of message after message after message of people who were slowly getting the news. 

For the moment, he only responded to two. He sent a quick, _love you too, see you soon_ to May’s _good morning, text me when you can_ and then set his sights on the text thread he shared with MJ. 

_I don’t quite believe this is real,_ she wrote with an attached link to the local report of the accident. 

_Crash that killed 20-year-old Queens native deemed accident._

Peter stared at it, read the article that didn’t give much more information than he’d already had three times in a row, and then typed:

_happy fucking holidays._

*

He was at the kitchen table, but he wasn’t eating. 

Morgan munched on a lunch of grilled cheese and Peter stared at a quickly cooling cup of coffee clutched in his hands with bloodshot eyes. 

Tony grilled another sandwich and Pepper waited for the kettle to boil and rainbow Christmas bulbs glittered around the edge of the window, reflecting off of everything in the room despite the bright sunlight, but Peter wasn’t really there. 

Peter wasn’t really anywhere. 

“Are you okay?” Morgan asked, ever to-the-point. 

“Morgan,” Tony warned from the stove, but Peter waved him off with a hand they all pretended was steady. 

“I’m okay now, Mo,” he said. “Sorry I scared you last night.”

“You didn’t scare me,” she said with the amount of certainty only available to eight-year-old girls and supervillains who dressed up like zoo animals. “You were sad but that’s not scary.” 

“Yeah,” Peter sighed.  
  
“Are you still sad?”

“I think I’m going to be sad for a little while,” Peter confirmed. Morgan frowned in consideration. 

“Because Ned died?”

Peter clamped down on a trembling jaw. “Mmhmm,” he hummed to his coffee. It wasn’t even warming the palms of his hands anymore he had been sitting there so long. 

He wanted to fall asleep but knew he wouldn’t be able to, he wanted to lay down in May’s lap and put on a movie that could distract him from his real life for a couple of hours. 

Mostly he wanted to place a call to a dead man, but then there were small arms wrapping around him and a messy head of hair tucked up against his shoulder and he choked on his own breath instead of hugging Morgan back. Sometimes it was unbearable, how loved he got to feel. 

Tony placed a sandwich in front of Peter and then gently extricated Morgan from the quietly crying superhero at their kitchen table. He mumbled something to the girl and softly urged Peter to _please eat_ before pushing his daughter up the stairs and out of his hair so he could fall apart in peace. 

“God,” Peter said with a watery, bitter sort of laugh, finally allowing his shoulders to cave in. “You know, when I was a kid I was so obsessed with the idea of being friends with Iron Man-- with any superhero?”

“May’s told me stories,” Pepper smiled down softly at him. 

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I was just-- I got it in my head that maybe if my parents had had someone like Iron Man in their corner, that they would’ve survived because he would’ve seen that something was wrong with the plane and he would’ve gotten them out of there. I thought-- I _thought_ that knowing a superhero was supposed to make you _safer,_ but we don’t actually make any difference, do we? Not for stuff like this.”

Pepper didn’t respond and Peter didn’t eat.

*

_“Boost me.”_

_“Peter, I don’t think this is a good idea.”_

_“It’s just trash-- come on, I can see a VHS player right there at the top!”_

_“You don’t know what’s in there, you could hurt yourself!”_

_“Ned. Do you, or do you not, want to be able to watch the original VHS release of Empire?”_

_“... I do.”_

_“Then_ boost me!”

*

Peter could hear Happy’s car pulling up long before it came into view, so he waited out in the snow for them to arrive. 

May and Peter hugged and cried alone in the snowy front yard for fifteen minutes before Happy returned from bringing their luggage inside and ushered the Parkers into the warmth of the house. 

“Is there anything we can do for them?” May asked, arm around Peter on the couch and fingers smoothing down unwashed hair. 

“I’m helping with some of the funeral stuff,” Peter said. “But no one is gonna take my calls until after Christmas. I tried this morning.” 

“Kid,” Tony chimed in. “I’m telling you, I can get that stuff done in a flash and take it off your plate.”

Peter was shaking his head before Tony even finished. They had already had this conversation. 

“I promised Mrs. Leeds I’d make sure it got done right, so I’m gonna… I’m gonna do that.” 

May pulled him closer by the nape of his neck and kissed the top of his head as though he was still small enough to crawl into her lap and fall asleep there. 

Peter wished he was. 

*

At some point in the late afternoon, Peter found himself sitting alone on the front porch steps, forearms on knees and hat pulled low over his ears. The air was crisp and his breath clouded up in front of his face and the pressure behind his eyes only grew. 

He looked out into the yard at the snow fort still standing tall. That monument to childhood joy and whimsy looked different when the sun went behind the clouds, like Peter’s very aura had managed to infect it by merely being in its presence. He wondered what Christmas magic was actually supposed to be able to accomplish, because in his experience, it wasn’t a hell of a lot. 

On the first Christmas after Peter’s parents died, May and Ben had taken him to the movies. 

The night before, Christmas Eve, he had a severe enough breakdown that sometimes, on the bad days, twenty-year-old Peter Parker could still feel the way six-year-old Peter Parker’s lungs had ached with the weight of it all. 

He hadn’t been old enough then to verbalize, or even really understand, what exactly was hitting him so hard nearly ten months after his parents’ funeral, but _something_ was hurting him and all he knew how to do was cling to his aunt’s festive pajama set and wail into the night. 

When he had woken up in the morning and could still barely look at the colorful, _please-don’t-lose-your-childhood_ decorations because of the way they shredded his insides, Ben declared they were creating a new Christmas tradition-- movie theater hopping. 

The little, heartbroken family spent the rest of the day jumping between theaters on the cost of one ticket each, sneaking out during the credits and sneaking in at the end of the first act, giggling over their little secret and eating snacks out of May’s massive tote of a purse. 

Peter wouldn’t ever remember what movies they saw that year, and he knew he probably slept through big chunks of them, curled up in his theater seat with Ben’s big coat draped over him like the snuggliest blanket he’d ever known, but he’d remember the warmth. He’d remember the Thai restaurant with its shining, neon OPEN sign in the window and how they didn’t even look at the presents under the tree until December twenty-sixth. 

He couldn’t verbalize why it mattered to him then, but by the time he reached two full decades of life, Peter was intimately familiar with grief. It faded with time and it eventually stopped being every-day, constant, eternal distress but boy, did it love a significant date on a calendar. 

Grief loved birthdays and anniversaries and Christmases just as much as little Morgan Stark did, and Peter just wasn’t sure he could resolve their two beings in the same space. Not this year. 

He pushed himself up off the porch and strode inside.

Peter couldn’t save his own childhood Christmases from loss, but maybe he could save Morgan’s. 

*

_“Flash is a jerk.”_

_“I’m fine, Ned.”_

_“You can be upset about it. He’s the worst.”_

_“Yeah, but I’m used to it.”_

_“Please let me tell a teacher? It might help, Peter.”_

_“That’s okay. I don’t need Flash to like me. I’ve got you, right?”_

_“Forever and ever.”_

*

May was placing the cookies they’d made neatly onto plates when Peter trundled down the stairs with his duffle slung hastily over one shoulder. 

“Peter?” 

“Is your car in your usual spot at the apartment or can I park there?” Peter asked as he pushed towards the front door, May immediately close on his heels. 

“What are you talking about?” she threw her hands up as she chased him down. “Where are you going? Happy stop him.”

“I’m gonna go stay at the apartment for a few days-- Okay,” Peter came to an abrupt halt when Happy stepped in front of him and blocked his path to the door. “That feels unnecessary.” 

Happy shrugged, but the look on his face held more soft concern than it had any right doing. 

“What do you mean you’re going to stay at the apartment?” May asked. 

“What’s going on?” And there was Tony entering the conversation. 

“Great, the whole gang’s here,” Peter muttered, vaguely grateful that Pepper and Morgan were preoccupied somewhere away from all the commotion. 

“Peter, you can’t just leave,” May insisted. 

“You’re trying to leave?” Tony asked. 

“Kid, if you’d rather spend Christmas in Queens, I’m sure no one would mind,” Happy said. 

Peter pressed the pad of his thumb right between his eyebrows to try and release some of the pressure there and took a deep breath. 

“Okay, here’s what’s happening,” he gathered himself, turned his body so he could address all three of them at once. “You’re all going to stay here and have a nice, pleasant Christmas, and you’re going to join me back in the city once the holiday festivities are over.”

He got furrowed brows in triplicate in response. 

“And why exactly are we going to do this?” Tony asked. 

“Because-- because it’s the best option for the current situation,” Peter said, knowing all the while that the way he shrugged and the bags under his eyes and the fact that he’d barely eaten anything all day was not working in his favor. 

“It most certainly isn’t.”

“Peter,” May tilted her head at him in that _I’m worried about you_ sort of way that he hated. “What’s going on?”

“I just--” he huffed out a frustrated sound. “It’s _Christmas.”_

“Yeah,” she nodded. 

Peter pinched at the bridge of his nose again because _fuck_ was his headache getting worse with every passing second. 

“Pete,” Tony prompted. 

“I’m not gonna be any fun,” Peter blurted out in exasperation and exhaustion in equal measure. “It’s Christmas and I’m a walking grief exhibition.” 

“That’s okay, sweetheart,” May said. “Everyone understands. We don’t expect you to do any more than you can.” 

“Morgan is _eight,”_ Peter’s voice cracked uncomfortably. He couldn’t tell if he was making his point or just making everyone pity him even more than they already did. 

“And she’ll survive a low-key holiday,” Tony implored. Peter shook his head despite the way it only exacerbated the feeling like it was being weighed down with bricks of solid ice. 

All he could hear was a six-year-old Peter telling him to run. All he could think about was Ben’s tired eyes one Christmas Eve many years ago. 

A little boy’s wailing cries. A multiplex theater. Thai food. 

He didn’t know how to verbalize it then, but he does now.  
  
“I can’t do Christmas tomorrow, Tony,” he broke, choking on fresh tears and the need to be understood. “I _can’t.”_

“Okay, c’mere,” Tony stepped forward and pulled Peter against his chest without hesitation. “Then we won’t. We don’t have to.” 

“I can barely breathe right now,” Peter said between shuddering gasps. “I just-- I can’t--”

“I know,” Tony said as he ran a thumb across the nape of Peter’s neck. “I hear you, alright? I hear you.” 

Peter could only hear the blood rushing in his ears.

*

Sleep grabbed ahold of him that night with claws of unadulterated exhaustion and zero intention of being restful. 

*

_“Do you think we could make glow stars for the ceiling that are brighter than these ones?”_

_“Ned. It’s one in the morning.”_

_“How do they make things glow in the dark anyways?”_

_“_ _Phosphorescence. It’s in that chapter we skipped in science last week.”_

_“You read the chapter we skipped?”_

_“...I got bored.”_

*

Peter woke up at four o’clock on Christmas morning and cried so hard into his pillow that he threw up in the trashcan next to his bed. 

He splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth and by quarter to five he had taken out the trash and curled himself up on the living room couch. He piled the comforting weight of about four blankets on his body and opened a new message to MJ. 

_merry christmas from one co-president to another_

He wasn’t all that surprised when three little dots floated at the bottom of his screen. He remembered what MJ’s insomnia had been like when her dad died when they were eighteen after all. 

_what are we co-presidents of this time?_

Peter instantly replied: _dead friend club._

MJ sent a clearly sarcastic party horn, and then a more sincere _merry christmas, parker_ before there were footsteps on the stairs and Peter forced himself to sit up. 

“Are you up early or late?” Tony asked, leaning pseudo casually in the arched entry to the living room. 

“I slept,” Peter answered the question he was really asking. 

“Friday told me you opened the back door for some reason.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “If she told you that she also told you I threw up, so don’t hurt yourself trying to beat around the bush.” 

“Alright then,” Tony nodded as he approached the couch. “Move then, because I’m sitting here.”

Peter obediently pulled his knees up to his chest, only for Tony to pull them back into his lap once he was situated. It was still dark outside, but the lights on the tree in the corner of the room cast warm shadows across everything, including the lines on Tony’s face. Peter shut his eyes to the sight of it and rested his head on the back of the couch, arms crossed tight over his chest and ache in his gut fading slightly. 

“How are you feeling?” Tony asked. “No bullshit.” 

“Language, Mister Stark,” Peter mumbled without opening his eyes. 

“Peter,” he gave Peter’s calf a quick squeeze that forced his eyes to open and his lungs to sigh. 

“I keep thinking about, um, Sydney Bloomberg,” Peter said after a contemplative beat, eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “I don’t know… She moved away the summer after seventh grade, but Ned and I used to go swimming in her pool. She had great water guns,” he finished simply. “I don’t know. I just remembered that.”

“Sydney Bloomberg, huh?”

“Yeah,” Peter ran a hand through his hair, propping the elbow up on the back of the couch to keep it there. “We were really close in middle school. I wonder if she’ll see the news, if she’ll even remember him.” 

“I think Ned Leeds was pretty unforgettable,” Tony said. Peter’s jaw trembled with the weight of holding the way that made him feel inside his throat, so he just nodded. 

“Can I be honest with you for a second without you getting scared and overreacting?” he asked in his shaking voice, fingers of that one hand clutching desperately at his own hair. 

“Yeah, kid,” Tony rubbed his shin through the mountain of blankets piled on top of them. 

“I don’t know how I’m gonna survive this again,” Peter breathed, all unchecked vulnerability and Christmas lights reflecting off the tears in his eyes. “I can’t see a world where I have to sit through another funeral and it doesn’t fucking kill me.” 

“I know,” Tony said, keeping himself together surprisingly well after that confession. “It’s not fair.” 

Peter filled his lungs to the point of nearly bursting and let out a heavy breath. 

“I have to get out of this house today,” he scrubbed at his hair restlessly. 

“Okay.”

Tony kept a hand on his legs. 

*

_“You want my pickles?”_

_“Look at me, of course I want your pickles.”_

_“Okay, chill.”_

_“It’s like you don’t even know me.”_

_“Are you going for the Oscar with this drama?_

_“My Delmar’s order always comes with extra pickles. And you call yourself my best friend.”_

_“Just take them, Peter!”_

_*_

They went to see a movie, some action-adventure nonsense that was the kind of thing Ned and MJ both couldn’t stand for opposite reasons. _(They completely disregarded the source material!-- Ned, they completely disregarded good storytelling period.)_

Peter knew that Tony and Pepper had had a _conversation_ with Morgan about why they were postponing Christmas for a day while he was in the shower, but the guilt in his heart was just white noise by that point. 

He fell asleep in the theater and woke up with Tony’s coat in his lap and followed along like a zombie when the family picked up Chinese takeout on the way home for dinner. It was like the part of his brain that felt grief got so clogged up that he couldn’t feel _anything_ and the day passed by in front of him in indecipherable blurs of color. 

Peter brought all the presents inside from the trunk of his car at one in the morning and passed out on the couch. 

*

Christmas was more successfully celebrated the next day, with presents and a big turkey dinner and the whole nine yards. 

Peter put on a good show of it, grateful for having been allowed an extra day, and nobody commented when he had to step outside to be alone and away from the bustle of the house halfway through the day. 

Well, mostly alone.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

“I’m thinking about that time you convinced us to steal all the remotes from Flash’s house senior year,” Peter said, phone slid snugly between his ear and his knit cap. 

“Almost all the remotes,” MJ laughed softly. 

“Right!” Peter grinned. “You left one in the freezer just to fuck with him.” 

“So he’d think they were all hidden instead of stolen.” 

The winter air tasted like melancholy on his tongue as he laughed. 

“Did Ned ever tell you that he brought them all back the next morning?” Peter asked, kicking at a half melted icicle that had fallen onto the porch. “Left an apology note and everything.”

“Yeah,” MJ said fondly. “He was always less of a degenerate than the two of us.” 

“Who’s gonna keep us in check now?” Peter aimed for sarcasm and missed by a mile, hitting somewhere closer to heartbroken instead. 

“I guess we’ll just have to step up for each other.” 

“Okay.” 

*

_“Did Liz get a new top?”_

_“No, we’ve seen that before. But never with that skirt.”_

_“We should probably stop staring before it gets creepy though.”_

_“Too late. You guys are losers.”_

_“Well, then why do you sit with us?”_

_“Because I don’t have any friends.”_

*

Peter thought that being back in the city was going to help. Queens was home and he could always find comfort in its familiarity no matter what else was going on in his chaotic whirlwind of a life. 

But now that he was actually standing in those streets, he realized that every corner, every storefront and restaurant and decade-old dumpster held a memory that he didn’t want to forget but didn’t want to relive either. Ned was everywhere and Peter felt like he needed to document just how _everywhere_ he was before time stole it from him. 

But it hurt too much and he didn’t know how. 

*

Although the Avengers had moved their operations upstate while Peter was in high school, Stark Industries still processed most of their operations out of that tower in the middle of Manhattan, so it never stopped being a place of refuge for the local hero contingency. 

Nowadays, a number of the upper floors housed the Avengers that were closer to retirement than active duty, offering them the security that some apartment in Brooklyn couldn’t quite match. Peter liked to refer to these teammates, Tony and Steve in particular, as the Elder-vengers. Emphasis on elder. 

Every single one of them had met Ned Leeds at one point or another. 

“No, I just--” Peter hunched over the counter in the common room’s kitchen with one hand on his forehead and the other on his phone. “I spoke to someone yesterday and they said the back room would be available for us-- I can’t remember, Jacob maybe? I don’t-- No, I understand that it’s the holiday season…”

Peter let out a heavy breath and resisted the urge to slam his forehead into the granite countertops when he heard the familiar sound of the elevator doors opening. He had figured he would have relative privacy in the common room at this time of morning, but even a retired Captain America was still Steve Rogers. 

“I have an entire funeral party to feed,” Peter turned back to his open laptop and messy post-it notes with quiet exasperation. “I just-- I thought this was already under control and we had the menu all sorted out but if you can’t give me the back room I’ll have to find somewhere else to go because I only have a few days to get this worked out now-- Really?”

Steve offered Peter a silent, friendly wave as he drained the bottom of the coffee pot across from Peter and immediately started to make a fresh one. 

“Yes, okay,” Peter perked up, scribbling down his new, God-willing _finalized_ plan. “That sounds perfect. Thank you for your help.” 

Peter hung up and let out a heavy sigh. So, it was going to cost a bit more, but that was fine. He had a Stark credit card for emergencies that was gathering dust in his wallet for how little he used it. 

“You know,” Steve said as the coffee pot began to drip. “You could use any of our names if it’ll make this stuff go easier for you.” 

Peter offered him a tired smile. “Thank you,” he said. “But as cool as Ned would find that, I think for his family’s sake I oughta keep his funeral from turning into a spectacle of any sort.” 

Steve nodded in understanding. He’d planned his fair share of funerals too, after all. 

“You hanging in there?” he asked bluntly, but not unkindly. 

Peter shrugged, and because something about his relationship with Steve pulled unfiltered honesty out of him no matter what, said, “Almost had a nervous breakdown on the subway yesterday, but I think I covered pretty well.” 

Steve hummed, downed the last of his coffee, and rinsed his mug out to place in the dishwasher. 

“Would punching something help?” 

Peter’s eyes lit up without his permission. “Yeah?”

“Get changed and meet me downstairs,” Steve said, already walking back towards the elevator, not even pretending like he had breached the common room for any purpose other than dragging Peter out of it. 

Peter wasn’t complaining. He scrambled to shut his laptop and moved to follow orders from his Captain. 

*

_“Does the War Machine suit have its own AI too?”_

_“I don’t know, actually.”_

_“How heavy is Captain America’s shield? Like super heavy?”_

_“Heavier than it looks. Vibranium is crazy.”_

_“How do the Falcon’s wings work?”_

_“Ned--”_

_“Are they a_ jet pack?!”

*

Peter Parker wasn’t a violent person by nature. Even as Spider-Man, he worked hard to keep everyone relatively unharmed. 

Armed assailants got webbed up against walls and dumpsters and for those that were unarmed, Peter had actually gotten pretty good at talking them out of whatever they were doing. The older he got (and the more book recommendations he got from MJ) the more he understood the inherent connection between poverty and crime, and the less his first reaction was to call the cops on someone just trying to figure out how to survive. 

(For this reason, Ned sometimes referred to Peter’s vigilante activities as _getting his Minor in social work_.)

So it wasn’t the implication of violence that made repeatedly punching the bag in front of him so cathartic, but the way it worked off the excess levels of adrenaline that had resided in his veins since the spider bite. Also the fact that it gave him an ache to focus on other than the one in his head and heart. 

“You holding back on me, Parker?”

“What?” Peter panted, stepping back and craning his neck to look at where Steve was holding the punching bag. 

“Come on,” Steve said. “I’ve seen your stats and you're at least as strong as I am, but thirty minutes in? I’d have knocked this thing straight off the chain by now.” 

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Are you challenging me?” 

“I’m just observing,” Steve shrugged. Challengingly. 

“Alright old man, step back,” Peter squared up and Steve lifted his hands and stepped away. There was a self-satisfied air to him that Peter recognized from everyone else who thought they were successfully distracting him from his grief lately, but he wasn’t going to comment on it. 

They were doing their best, and it wasn’t their fault that he was an expert at retreating into the fireproof, air-tight, terror-free box inside his head where he didn’t have to feel anything at all.

Peter bounced on the balls of his feet a couple of times, cracked his neck, and started swinging. One, two, three, four punches, and a flying roundhouse kick sent the bag flying across the room and slamming into a rack of weights full-force. But he didn’t even get the chance to gloat before a voice was filtering in from the doorway. 

“I see we’re using World War II era coping mechanisms today.” 

Peter whipped around to look at Sam and immediately pointed an accusing finger at Steve. 

“It was his idea.” 

“Wow, you broke fast,” Steve laughed. “Wilson, you don’t let this kid run reconnaissance right?”

“Not if I can help it,” Sam teased. “Saw your stuff in the common room-- you staying here until you go back to school?”

“Here and May’s,” Peter cleared his throat at what going back to school would actually mean. 

_Too much, too much, too much--_

“Well, be careful hanging around,” Sam continued. “Nat’s coming down from the Compound and if she sees you she’ll try to get that stupid band of yours going again.”

“The Arach-Notes is a genius idea and when Nat and I learn how to play instruments you’ll all be sorry,” Peter said. 

“You can say that again,” Steve muttered. Peter threw one of his shoes at him and Sam cackled. 

“Okay, I have actual work to do,” Sam made to leave. “But if you ever need to talk about it to someone from this century,” he said, a touch more seriously. 

“I appreciate it,” Peter said. “But I’m satisfied with punching about it for the moment.”

*

_“Oh my god, Peter, do you have a crush?”_

_“What?! No.”_

_“You so totally do.”_

_“I do not.”_

_“Look at your face! You so do!”_

_“Ned--”_

_“Who is it? She goes to this school right? OMG is it someone from decathlon?”_

_“I’m not answering that.”_

_“Doesn’t matter. Dude, you’re for sure gonna go on double dates with me and Betty.”_

*

Hands tucked deep inside his coat pockets, Peter came to a stop in front of an apartment building he hadn’t visited in over a year. Nonetheless, he pressed the buzzer with zero hesitation. 

“Yeah?”

“It’s me,” he said into the intercom. “Peter... Parker.” 

MJ snorted and the door clicked open. 

By the time Peter had trudged up the stairs, MJ was standing in the doorway to her apartment, arms crossed as she leaned against her shoulder and a small smile betrayed by the sadness in her eyes. 

“Hey,” he exhaled, knowing his face probably told a similar story. He had wanted to see her face again in person for so many months, and he hated that it had taken _this_ to make it happen. 

“Get over here, Parker,” she pushed off the wall, opened her arms, and fell into his space the same way he fell into hers, hands holding each other close on the landing outside her third floor apartment. 

“Good to see you,” he murmured into her hair. She didn’t say anything, but she squeezed him a bit tighter so he knew they were on the same page. 

*

“I can’t believe you still live here,” Peter said as MJ handed him a cup of coffee and sat down next to him on her sunken couch. 

“It’s a good apartment,” she defended. 

“In a _terrible_ part of town,” Peter combatted. “Do you know how many muggings I’ve stopped on this block alone?” 

“Yes, because you used to text me a running tally,” she deadpanned. The _when we were still together_ went unspoken. 

“Yeah, well, hasn’t gotten any better,” he pulled a face. 

“I can handle myself, Peter.”

“Oh, I know,” he nodded. “It’s the muggers I’m worried about. Obviously.” 

She slapped him lightly on the shoulder with the back of her hand, trying to hide a grin in her cup of tea. It felt familiar for a moment, painfully simple. 

But the quiet seeped in and they couldn’t play pretend anymore. 

“Do you want to talk about how you’re holding up,” MJ asked. “Or should we keep avoiding the tragedy in the room?”

Peter’s lips quirked downwards and he tucked a leg underneath himself to face MJ more fully. 

“I can tell you one thing,” he said. “I’m not ever letting myself go more than a week without talking to you again.” 

“Yeah,” MJ agreed. 

“How about you?” Peter asked, even though he could pretty much already read the answer in the bags under her eyes. 

“You were his best friend, Peter,” she shook her head. “I’m not going to complain about this to you.”

“Come on, you were just as close to him as I was,” Peter pressed. “You don’t have to downplay that.” 

“I don’t know,” MJ sighed. 

“After we broke up I would ask him how you were doing and he always, without fail, told me to fuck off because he wasn’t going to spy on you for me,” Peter said in a tone of voice that almost sounded like laughter. “He loved the shit out of you.” 

“Yeah,” she cleared her throat abruptly in the way that Peter knew meant she didn’t know how to say how she was feeling so she’d rather say nothing at all. “I can’t talk about this yet, I don’t think.” 

Peter nodded. “Tell me about school.” 

Gratitude lifted a visible weight from MJ’s shoulders. 

“It’s good,” she said. “I’m on track to graduate early if I do summer classes again next year.” 

“That’s amazing, Em,” Peter said sincerely. “Is law school still on the docket?”

“Probably,” she shrugged. “Might take a year or two in between though. Do some light environmental activism in my free time.” 

“You know if you ever need a superhero face for publicity…”

“I’ll be sure to call one of the Captains America I still have in my contacts,” she smirked at him slyly. 

Peter shook his head at her fondly. “Unbelievable.” 

MJ just raised her eyebrows and took a long sip from her mug. Still looking down at it, she said, “For the record, I asked about you too.” 

“Really?” Peter didn’t bother trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice. 

“He actually did answer my questions, though,” she shrugged. 

“Traitors,” he mock-gaped. 

The weight of trembling grief colored her laughter. 

*

Peter went to the Avengers’ New Year’s party. 

Not because he particularly had any interest or energy for frivolity, but because it was what he’d been planning to do. This party had been on his calendar for _months_ and Ned had been counting down the days and who was Peter to ditch just so he could curl up and pass out in his bedroom at May’s apartment? 

He spent the first hour trying to make casual conversation with his friends, but quickly discovered that there would be no _casual_ for some time yet. Not so long as he still looked like he wasn’t quite living inside his own body. 

So instead he took up residence on the outermost couch, drink in hand as he people-watched with a pleasantly quiet Wanda by his side. 

“You’ve lost a brother too,” she said at some point when Peter had drunk enough to feel fuzzy at his edges. 

He just nodded and let her hold his hand as the clock counted down to midnight and discordant cheers filled the room. 

*

_“Resolutions?”_

_“No alien invasions this year.”_

_“Solid.”_

*

Peter slept. 

And he slept. 

And he slept. 

And he cried over a dream about two boys whispering at the back of a classroom. 

*

The funeral parlor was empty save for the people that worked there when Peter arrived, early enough that he could make sure everything was in order and any issues would be resolved before Ned’s family began to arrive. 

He was alone, in a room lined with chairs facing front in rows like neat, little soldiers stood at attention to the urn standing like a monument before them. His heart thudded out an uneven rhythm against his ribs. 

“Hi,” Peter clasped his hands awkwardly in front of him. He already knew that he wasn’t going to cry on this day, because he had decided to let the numb take over. “Can I sit here?” he motioned to a chair in the front row, facing the urn on its pedestal. 

“Thanks,” he said in acknowledgement to an answer he didn’t get, sitting down with his back ramrod straight and his hands in his lap. “So. This is new for us. I don’t really know what I’m doing-- at all-- but we can figure it out together, right? Like before? Like always?” 

He could hear the heater kick on somewhere in the building, knew he didn’t have long before the funeral director came back and the family started to filter in, but it was like a compulsion, this conversation. (Was monologue a more appropriate term when conversing with the dead?)

“You’ve got people over there. That’s good,” he continued. “At least you aren’t starting from scratch this time... Check in on Ben for me, would you? And I’ll look out for Abby as much as she’ll let me.” 

Peter stared at the wreath of flowers around Ned’s urn-- they had wanted sunflowers, but that wasn’t much of an option in January. Ned loved sunflowers, was obsessed with the way they chased the sun with their wide-open faces. Peter wondered if that was something that still happened once their stems were cut and they were put into vases. 

“It’s Peter, by the way,” he scrunched up his face. “I don’t know if that was clear. Peter Parker… Anyway. Thank you.” 

Footsteps approached from down the hall. 

*

The funeral passed quickly. 

Mister Leeds spoke, as did the pastor from their church, as did Abby, and Peter just sat there and didn’t even bother trying to listen all that hard and wondered what it actually meant to _honor the dead._

Was the honor in their memories, the good parts, the stories that were fun to share and reminisce about? Was it in Bible verses and poetry and stages of grief? Or was it in the honesty that Peter had loved Ned and some days he hadn’t wanted anything to do with him and some days he didn’t understand how they had become friends in the first place and once, in a moment of shameful doubt, he had wondered if he would have ever been friends with Ned Leeds if they hadn’t met so young. 

The wake that followed consisted of Ned’s big family crammed into the back room of a tiny Italian restaurant, Peter and May and MJ and a handful of other friends camped out at a little table in the corner. 

The informality of it woke Peter up a little bit, brought him back into his body as he chimed into the conversation with stories of his own. Not his favorite ones, not the ones that he and Ned had once upon a time said _just between us two_ about, but good ones nonetheless. 

Betty invited all of the decathlon kids in attendance over to her place as everyone began to filter out, and all of them, including Peter and MJ, were eager to continue sharing the moment with people that knew Ned as they had. Not as family or distant acquaintances, but as friends who came of age together in the back of busses and the floors of classrooms, with flashcards in hand and jokes on tongues. 

Also, she was supplying the alcohol. 

They managed to laugh loudly on the floor of Betty’s living room, Peter and MJ meeting eyes periodically from where they sat across from one another. They told stories about the meet when Ned answered the winning question; when he swore he’d color his hair blue if they beat their biggest competitors junior year, only to settle for wearing a goofy wig to school because his mom found the dye in the bathroom and took it away; when he told each of them, individually and often, that they were doing a good job. 

A piece was still missing, and a structurally important one at that, but sometimes laughing is just as cathartic as crying. Sometimes, it’s the only way for sadness to leave the body. 

*

“You should walk me home,” MJ suggested softly as Peter followed her out of Betty’s building and onto the narrow sidewalk. 

They were both a little bit tipsy and the buzz was flushing Peter’s cheeks despite the sharp chill in the air. The shine of the moon hid behind grey clouds. 

“You want to be walked home?” Peter quirked an eyebrow at her. “I thought you were a mugger’s worst nightmare.”

MJ shrugged. “Do it anyway,” she said, eyes intent on his face and smile pulling at her cheeks. Her hair was being mussed up by the wind being pushed between tall buildings and _god_ when had she had the time to go and get even more beautiful? 

“Yeah?” Peter lifted an eyebrow, a smirk playing at his lips even as the skin under his scarf flushed pink.

“If you want,” she looked at him expectantly and offered up her hand to hold. Not pushing, just putting the option there in front of them. The opportunity to not spend that night alone. 

Peter looked at her gloved hand, and then back up to her face. Her hair was pushed off her forehead by a knit cap, so he could see both her eyes without impediment. 

He put his hand in hers and tugged her gently towards her apartment. 

*

They were kissing before the door was even all the way shut behind them, right there in the living room of MJ’s studio apartment the way they’d done so many times before. 

Peter kicked the door closed with the heel of his boot so he didn’t have to remove his hands from MJ’s cheeks and MJ in return let her coat fall to the floor and let her hands glide under Peter’s to pull him closer by his waist. 

She was flesh and blood and soul, pulling Peter Parker straight back into her orbit (as if he had ever left) with one press of her wind-chapped lips on his own. 

“You’re sure about this?” Peter asked through heavy breaths as MJ helped him out of his coat and scarf and hat. She leaned in to press a long kiss to his cheek before pulling back to look him in the eye. 

“Yeah,” she breathed. “You?” 

Peter nodded, unable to keep the utter awe she instilled in him off of his face. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, God, of course.” 

MJ grinned, a small laugh bubbling up out of her as she pulled him in for another kiss on the mouth-- slower, more exploratory, and so very, very right. 

She pulled him further into the apartment towards her bed. 

Peter would have followed her off a cliff. 

*

Peter woke up warm and soft and, for the first time in what felt like years, without a headache. He woke up slowly, with a fuzziness where the ache usually was, and let his eyes open of their own accord to the unmatchable sight of Michelle Jones sleeping soundly beside him. 

A heartbeat, a breath, an exhale of peace and comfort. 

Peter traced the curve of her hairline, down across her cheekbone and to the tip of her nose with the gentle pad of his index finger, barely touching the unearthly glow of her skin. She was beautiful, her space was _beautiful_ and she had allowed him to enter it and he was in awe of it, in awe of the fact that he could even _feel_ that way anymore. 

“You’re going to wake me up,” MJ murmured without opening her eyes, barely moving her lips. Peter grinned. 

“Whoops,” he whispered unapologetically. 

She rolled over onto her side to face him and when their gazes met Peter felt his entire body flush pink. As many times as he had tried to convince himself otherwise, Peter didn’t think he could ever get tired of this woman or the way her mere presence made his world feel brighter. She made him feel sappy and gooey and not at all ashamed for it. 

“You’re still here,” she said, softly running a finger down the length of his bare sternum. It was nice to know the urge for physical contact wasn’t an entirely one-sided thing. 

“You stole my shirt,” Peter pointed out. 

“It was cold,” MJ explained. That was a conversation they’d had plenty of times. Peter, with all his spider DNA quirks, was cold to the touch for pretty much the entirety of winter-- a downside to sharing a bed with him. 

“I’m gonna need the shirt back if I’m gonna leave.” 

“Hmm,” MJ hummed. “Something _finder’s keepers_ comes to mind.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I’ve got my suit in my backpack,” Peter said. “I can just swing back to May’s and get dressed there.” 

MJ made a sound of discontentment as she stretched an arm over Peter’s abdomen and pulled herself closer to him.

“Not yet,” she said, pressing her face into the crook of his neck and allowing him to wrap her up in his arms. 

Peter was happy in that moment, and he was guilty about how happy he was, and so he pushed everything that wasn’t MJ’s soft skin and body heat out of his mind. After all, with everything Peter Parker had survived in his short life, he was nothing if not an expert at compartmentalization. 

“Tell me to shut up if this is out of line,” he trailed his knuckles up and down the span of her shoulder blades. 

“Uh oh,” MJ deadpanned. 

“I wanna go on a real grown-up date with you.” 

She lifted her head slightly to look at his face, eyes exploring his expression as if searching him for something. 

“Last night not grown up enough for you?” she deflected. 

“I’m serious, Em,” Peter didn’t move from their comfortable position and so neither did MJ. “I mean, we broke up over a year ago without ever _really_ breaking up completely and I don’t see the point in-- Just-- What difference does distance make, what difference does _Spider-Man_ make when either one of us could-- could just…”

He ran a frustrated hand down his face and let it fall onto his chest. MJ sat up and leaned back against the headboard. 

“Die in a freak car accident?” she said bluntly, but not maliciously. 

Peter made a vague movement with his hands that he knew she would be able to read as confirmation. 

“Saying this right now,” she shook her head. “Peter, it’s reactionary and you know it.” 

“Bet your ass saying it is reactionary,” he sat up too so he could face her head-on. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking it for months.” 

“You know how addicts aren’t supposed to make big life decisions until they’ve been sober for however long?” MJ said. “It feels like maybe that applies here.”

“I’m not trying to pressure you,” Peter sighed. 

“I know you aren’t,” she responded certainly. 

“But I’m also not being rash,” he insisted. 

MJ chewed on the inside of her cheek in a contemplative sort of way before she spoke up again, and Peter didn’t dare take his eyes off her for fear of missing something important. 

“I was volunteering recently-- at that women’s shelter?”

“Yeah,” Peter breathed. “You told me about it.”

MJ nodded, looked down at her fidgeting hands and her torn up nail beds. 

“There was a woman there, only really a handful of years older than us actually, like, so young,” she said. “She had a three-year-old-- a daughter-- and the father wasn’t in the picture from the start so when she met a guy that she really liked she thought, _Oh, thank God my kid’s going to get to have a dad.”_

Peter couldn’t take his eyes from MJ’s face. He couldn’t quite parse together the point of the story yet either, but he knew that there was one, knew that Michelle Jones didn’t use more words than she ever needed. 

“So, she marries the guy and it’s great,” MJ continued. “It’s great for months until it’s not. And then it’s bad for months until it’s worse. And so she puts her kid up for adoption in some last ditch attempt to save her life even if she couldn’t save her own. 

“But then she met someone from our shelter, just by chance, and she got out of that house. And now she’s safe, and she’s getting her life back on track but her daughter is living in someone else’s home and she doesn’t have any rights to go see her,” MJ broke eye contact with Peter, shook her head at herself, and took a breath. “I don’t know-- I don’t know what my point is other than I know how I feel about you and I _know_ that I’m not selfless enough to give you up, but I can’t stop thinking about the next phone call I’m gonna get in the middle of the night and wondering who’s going to be the one to inform me of your death.” 

It was moments like that when Peter was reminded just how traumatizing loss was. Sometimes, he let himself feel desensitized to it, sometimes he _forced_ himself too, but if anyone understood the nagging fear that someone you love could die at any given moment and there’s nothing you could have done about it, it’s Peter Benjamin Parker. 

“Okay,” Peter said simply as he pulled MJ against his chest. “Conversation for another day, I’m sorry.” 

MJ took a deep, overly-controlled breath and held onto Peter as tightly as he held onto her. 

“I miss him,” she murmured into his neck. 

“Yeah,” Peter breathed. “Me too.” 

“I just wish there was something more we could do to make any part of it more-- survivable.”

Peter took a breath, and after a moment of thought: “Will you help me look out for Abby?” 

MJ pulled away far enough to meet his eyes. They had matching crystal tears sitting stagnant behind lashes. 

“Of course.” 

She kissed his cheek and his eyes fell shut. 

*

_“We should do it.”_

_“We absolutely should not.”_

_“Come on! Dude, we have to do it.”_

_“No. Nope. Terrible idea.”_

_“Please?”_

_“No.”_

_“But… Yes?”_

_“No!”_

_“Ugh fine.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“I’m gonna call Mr. Happy and tell him you’re a wimp though.”_

*

“I think there’s something wrong with this, but I can’t tell what,” Peter said, squinting at the holographic screen in front of him, shoulders slumped and coffee gone cold. 

“Yeah?” Tony questioned from the other end of the worktable. 

Peter poked cautiously at a few keys until a massive ERROR message popped up on screen. 

“Actually, yeah. Positive something’s not right.” 

Tony looked over at Peter’s work and snorted good-naturedly before moving closer. 

“Are they not teaching you coding at that big, fancy school of yours?” he teased. 

“I’m very comfortable with my weaknesses,” Peter deadpanned. What he didn’t mention was that he was comfortable with the weaknesses that happened to overlap with Ned’s strengths. 

“Alright,” Tony rolled his eyes. “Here, try this on instead.”

Peter automatically offered up his wrist for the StarkWatch prototype that Tony had been fiddling with for a few weeks. 

“Explain to me what about this watch is different from the last one?” Peter asked, even as he admired the way it held snugly to his wrist. 

“Incredibly long battery life,” Tony said. “And a solar powered option that will make it particularly useful for--”

“The homelessness relief initiative?” Peter’s eyes lit up at Tony, before he started fiddling with the blue face of the watch that deemed it as still in development. And then, more to himself than anything: “MJ’s gonna love that.”

Tony leaned a hip against the table next to Peter, clearly holding himself back from saying something. 

“What?” Peter asked, lifting an eyebrow at him. 

“Nothing,” Tony shook his head. “May said you didn’t go home last night. She thought you were here.”

Peter looked back down at the watch, but he knew the flush at the tops of his ears gave him away. 

“So,” Tony said, mock casually. “How is Michelle?”

Peter let out a breath through his nose parading as a laugh. 

“She’s MJ,” he shrugged, figuring there was no use in trying to lie. Not when he was too emotionally wound up to really be successful at it. “She focuses all her energy into making sure I’m okay and we both pretend I can’t see how much she’s hurting until she decides she’s ready to talk about it.”

Tony hummed in understanding. 

“I’m not gonna tell you to stop what you’re doing,” he said. “But May only started to like me when I stopped lying to her about your whereabouts.” 

“Not asking you to lie,” Peter said. “Nothing to really lie about anyway.” 

Tony gave him a skeptical once-over. 

“There’s a little bit to lie about,” he said. “Just don’t make any flash decisions right now, yeah? You’re putting on a good show, but if you think I can’t tell your head isn’t back on your shoulders yet…”

Peter actually _chuckled_ at that, low and amused and touched with bitterness. 

“What?” Tony asked defensively. 

“Neither of you would ever believe how similar you are,” Peter shrugged. 

Tony didn’t outwardly react to that, but Peter knew he took it for the compliment it was. Very few people were held in as high regard to Peter as Michelle Jones, and Tony knew it. He had been there to witness the aftermath of the breakup, after all. 

“Give me my watch back,” Tony shoved lightly at the side of Peter’s head and held out an expectant hand. 

“Right,” Peter tapped at it with a mocking scowl. “Something’s wrong with the code. You should really have someone take a look at that.” 

*

He was going to end up all over Twitter for this one, he knew it even before he started but couldn’t really be bothered to change his course of action. 

“Peter,” Karen said in his ear. “You have three new messages from Tony Stark and an incoming call from Michelle Jones.”

“Christ,” Peter mumbled, sliding wire clippers into his tool belt and a screwdriver out. “Can’t even let me finish first.” 

“Would you like me to put the call from Michelle through?”

“Yeah, thanks Karen,” he sighed before turning on a much more chipper persona once the call connected. “Jones! To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“You’re being weird and I’m trying to decide if it’s a cause for concern or not,” MJ said bluntly, but he could practically see the worried face she was making at the Twitter feed almost certainly pulled up on her laptop. 

“Nothing weird about helping the good people of Queens,” Peter replied. “It’s kind of my whole schtick if you hadn’t noticed.” 

“Fixing traffic lights is your schtick now?” she deadpanned. “You’re really broadening the definition of _vigilante_ , huh?”

“Excuse you, I’m more than a vigilante,” Peter said, adjusting his upside down perch where he was in fact elbow deep in a malfunctioning traffic light. “I’m a part-time Avenger now.” 

“Part-time electrician too, it would seem.” 

“This thing has been glitching out for over a week, MJ!” he insisted, voice going up in pitch and hands working faster. “Do you know how many accidents I’ve stopped at this intersection in the past nine days? _Three!_ That’s an accident every three days!” 

He didn’t need MJ’s sigh to be as audible as it was for him to hear everything she was thinking at that moment. He knew that he was projecting, and he knew that he was fixating on something he could fix rather than all the things he couldn’t, and he _knew_ that keeping watch over one unsafe intersection for the past week and a half was tipping over into obsessive behavior. Thinking about it too long or hard made his headache come back though, so he wasn’t thinking about any of that. 

“It was weather conditions, Peter,” she said gently. “It was ice and snow. There was nothing anyone could have done.” 

Peter clenched his jaw and twisted his screwdriver a little bit harder than necessary before sliding it back into his belt and flicking a switch. A cheer erupted from a small group of people who had been standing on the corner and watching him as the traffic light turned back on. 

“Aha!” He waved to the people and gave a double thumbs up. “Take that, traffic safety demons.”

“Are you having dinner at May’s tonight?” MJ asked, concession loud in her soft voice. 

“Yeah,” Peter responded, swinging himself from his perch and using his moment to land on a nearby fire escape. “But I could see you after if you’d like?”

“I would like,” she admitted in the voice that somewhere along the line Peter had realized was just for him. 

“That’s settled then,” he smiled softly. 

“Okay, yeah, good.” 

They sat on the line in silence for a brief moment, sharing breaths and sharing company, even from a distance. 

“MJ?”

“Yeah?”

“I do know there are healthier ways to cope,” Peter acquiesced. “I promise I’m working on it.” 

“I know you are,” she said. “But we’ve gotta help each other right? That’s what dead friend club’s all about?” 

“Sure is,” he chuckled sadly. “I’ll see you tonight.”

*

_“Uh oh.”_

_“Peter....”_

_“Yeah, uh, we need to...”_

_“What was I thinking? I’m not a field action guy! I’m a guy in the chair!”_

_“For the record this was your idea, but it’s time to run now!”_

_“Peter!”_

_“Channel your inner Avenger, Ned!”_

*

Peter went back to school. 

Tony insisted on driving Peter’s car with May and Happy trailing in a car behind them, three people making a round-trip to MIT and back just so Peter wouldn’t have to get behind the wheel of his own fucking car. 

Apparently, imagining the scene of your best friend getting into a violent and fatal car wreck for three weeks straight equated to a massive panic attack the minute you tried to actually drive. So, yeah. Adult supervision for Peter. 

The Leeds family had already come and cleaned out all of Ned’s things from their shared apartment, graciously closing his bedroom door on the way out so Peter wouldn’t have to see just how empty it was now. 

It still felt empty, there was no helping that. 

It felt like living on the other side of a mirror, the same but opposite with everything right where he had left it but impossible to find. 

No one wanted to leave Peter there alone, but he was adamant that he could handle it so eventually, after letting Tony stock the kitchen with more food than one person could possibly get through and May vacuum his bedroom and tuck in his fresh sheets, they took their leave. 

*

He lost control of his breath and two full hours of time when he went to make a cup of coffee and realized the coffeemaker was gone because it had belonged to Ned. 

As much as Peter really did think that it would be okay, thought that he’d been through this enough that he could let himself be numb to it, it still only took three weeks to prove himself wrong. 

*

Bradley Henderson was a boy from Connecticut that lived on Peter and Ned’s floor during their freshman year in the dorms. He was a bit of a pain in the ass and not much more than _vague acquaintance_ material, but less than a month into the school year he had already established himself as the go-to guy for any party or contraband hookup you could want. 

When Peter got back to school in January, he discovered that he shared a class with Henderson on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and in every class for three weeks party-hookup-go-to-guy invited Peter to a party. 

And every time, without fail, Peter turned him down. Until he didn’t. 

“Hey, man,” Henderson said as he slid into the seat directly to Peter’s right. “I just heard about what happened to Ned over break-- Janine told me-- and I’m so sorry. I know you guys were tight.” 

“Oh,” Peter looked at him, caught off guard and having assumed that most of the condolences he’d have to sit through had passed him by already. “Um, yeah, thanks.” 

“Listen, I’m having a hang thing at my place tonight,” Henderson continued. “A little smaller than my usual gig, but you’re totally welcome to join if you need a break and wanna drink about it.” 

Peter considered it, considered all the assignments he’d barely completed, if that, over the past few weeks, considered the way he’d fallen asleep in the library more often than not because he couldn’t in his own apartment, considered how he’d been fielding concerned text messages and phone calls from people who meant well but weren’t letting him go numb the way he so desperately wanted to. 

He considered it, and then he said: “Yeah, actually. That sounds great.” 

*

As it turned out, a _small hangout_ in Henderson’s eyes was still a bigger party than Peter had been to since the insanity of Welcome Week many months ago. There were half a dozen people scattered across the front porch and many, many more crammed inside the small house, but plenty of free booze that Peter immediately took advantage of. 

He wandered, and he held semi-coherent conversations with people he’d met in various classes over the past year and a half, and he accepted every drink, every shot, every joint that got offered in his direction. 

He chased down the numb that he so desperately craved and he could find it, he was finding it, he had _found it_ when an offhand comment from a girl named Hannah or Haley or Helen reminded him of this one time in high school that he and Ned had--

Peter was turning over his left shoulder, Ned’s name on his lips to reminisce like they so often did, when the wind was knocked out of him and he lost ahold of the numb in favor of a stabbing pain he had been pushing aside for weeks. 

He choked on the phantom blood filling his lungs and before he knew what he was doing he was stumbling out onto the porch, past the handful of people smoking in lawn chairs, down the steps, and puking in the bushes. 

College, huh. 

Peter’s retching turned into a sob and _fuck_ would he be embarrassed by this in the morning, but in the moment he just _hurt._ Ned was gone, Ned was _gone,_ and Peter missed him so much that it was _terrifying._

Knees damp with mud and fingers clawed into the dead grass, Peter, in his cross-faded state, recalled a conversation he had had with Tony on Christmas morning. 

_He didn’t know how he was supposed to survive this._

He didn’t know what the next step was, he barely knew how to catch his breath in that moment let alone how to move forward from this house party and the ghost of Ned Leeds standing watch over him. 

Peter pushed himself upright and sat flat on his ass, looking out at the way the porch lights glittered off of wet asphalt and thinking of one person who always knew how to find the answers. 

His fingers felt too big for his hands, but eventually they were able to dial her number. 

“Peter?” MJ’s voice was immediately frantic because-- oh, right. It was the middle of the night. 

“I’m having a bad night,” Peter slurred. 

“Where are you? Are you okay?” MJ got straight to the point. “What’s going on?” 

“At Henderson’s,” Peter mumbled, letting his eyes fall shut so he could focus on what MJ was saying. The lights were sparkly and it was distracting him from her very important words. MJ’s words were always very important. “Party’s going on.” 

“You’re drunk?”

“Threw up in the yard,” Peter said honestly. “I’ll sober up soon.” 

“Well,” MJ sighed, slowly calming down as she got a better feel for the situation. “Better out than in.” 

Peter snorted with indignation and a little bit of bitterness, listing sideways to lean against a ceramic pot that probably held flowers in the springtime. 

“Sorry. For the call right now,” he stuttered out more sincerely. “Know how that scares you.” 

“I forgive you,” she said, because they both knew it wasn’t okay. Late night phone calls were MJ’s _trying to drive without seeing your best friend fly through the windshield._

“I’m just…” Peter trailed off and let out a sound of utter discontentment. 

“Do you want to talk about this tomorrow?” MJ asked. “When you’re sober?” 

“I don’t want to talk about this at all,” Peter said in that broken way he was getting too accustomed to. “Because I don’t want this to be a thing that’s happening to me-- it’s just-- it keeps _happening to me.”_

“I know,” MJ sighed. 

“I don’t think I can handle school the way I said I would,” Peter admitted. 

“You can take a break, Peter,” she insisted. “No one is going to fault you for that.” 

“I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time handling it,” he shook his head at himself despite the fact that MJ wasn’t there to witness the way his frustration was making it known in every move of his body. “I went back to school like two weeks after Ben died.” 

“This is different.”

“How?” Peter asked indignantly. 

“You were in the eighth grade at a public middle school and not the Massachusetts Institute of fucking Technology for one,” MJ deadpanned. “Not to mention the fact that you’re still trying to live in an apartment that’s one big trigger.” 

“Yeah,” he sighed. And then, after a beat of mutually necessary silence. “You know, I could feel it?”

“What?”

“I saw that fucking text from Abby and I knew-- I knew in my _gut_ that I was going to lose him,” Peter pressed forward over slurred and stumbling words. “Whether he was gone already or would be in the hospital for a while first-- I fucking-- I _knew._ Because this is what happens. This is just my-- my-- my life.” 

“Peter, do you have a way to get home?” MJ asked gently. 

“I’m Spider-Man,” he murmured, already halfway onto a different train of thought entirely. 

“Yeah.”

“I don’t feel like Spider-Man right now.”

“I want you to take a break,” MJ practically pleaded. “But I also want to have this conversation once you’ve had a glass of water and a good night’s sleep.” 

“Superheroes don’t take breaks, Em,” Peter said. 

“Tony Stark was active as Iron Man for what? A sum total of ten years?” MJ lectured. “You’re already going on _seven_ and you’re not even old enough to buy your own _beer.”_

“Okay, but--”

“Peter, if this Spider-Man thing is going to be even remotely sustainable you _have_ to take breaks and you _have_ to put yourself first. Please.” 

Peter could hear the marriage between genuine pleading and logical reasoning in her voice, in the way it was strong and steady but worn down at the edges, and knew that she was right. Again. 

“What if I want to put you first?”

“Don’t flirt with me while I’m trying to help you avoid a nervous breakdown at three o’clock in the morning, Parker,” she said bluntly, but not without a shred of tired amusement. 

“Okay,” he acquiesced. 

“Do you have a way to get home?” 

“Yeah.”

“Do you promise to text me when you’re in bed?”

“Promise.” 

It was one responsibility Peter knew he could live up to. 

*

The following morning, Peter dragged his hungover body out of bed and to his advisor’s office, where he explained he would be taking the rest of the semester off. 

*

“Kid? You don’t sound so good, what’s up?”

“I need a ride back to the city today if you or--or Happy or someone is available. I would drive myself I just-- I just-- I--”

“I’m on my way.”

*

_“Have you considered that maybe taking a break wouldn’t be such a bad thing?”_

_“Criminals don’t take a break, Ned.”_

_“Yeah, but superheroes that are also trying to graduate high school without killing themselves do.”_

_“But, if I’m not Spider-Man then what am I doing?”_

_“You’re being Peter Parker.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“I mean, Spider-Man is my favorite hero, but Peter Parker’s always gonna be my first friend.”_

_*_

The front door creaked open and fell shut, and Peter could hear May’s purse dropping onto the little table in the entryway, her shoes kicking off to follow it. She was moving about the living room when Peter’s sneaker squeaked against the kitchen tile and he heard her breath hitch. 

“It’s just me!” he called out. 

“Jesus Christ, Peter,” May rounded the corner into the kitchen so she could see him. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.”

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing your leak,” Peter explained as though it were obvious. It really should have been, the way he was propped up under the sink with a wrench in hand. 

“Okay…”

“This thing had a drip the entire time I was here over break and I know you well enough to know you’ll put off getting it fixed until it gets noticeably worse,” he said, not looking away from the task at hand.

“You made a trip home just to fix my sink?” May asked, softly and skeptically all at once. 

“Also, the showerhead was loose,” Peter pointed a hand towards the bathroom, even as May sat down on the floor across from him and tugged gently at his foot. 

“Peter, sit up please.”

He sighed, closed his eyes for a beat, and gathered his courage. He did as he was told. 

“What are you doing here, sweetheart?” May asked. “Why are you not at school?” 

Peter dropped eye contact with her, because he was deeply embarrassed and deeply broken and so very, very ashamed to not be living up to the amorphous expectations that no one in particular had put in place for him but hung heavy across his shoulders nonetheless.

“I’m-- taking some time off,” he said to the crack in the kitchen tile from when he had just gotten his powers and stomped on a cockroach a little too hard. 

Realization and understanding loosened something in May’s expression. 

“Okay,” she nodded. 

“I’m going back next semester, I promise,” Peter continued hurriedly. “I talked to my advisor and she says it’s fine and maybe I can take an online class over the summer so I won’t have fallen way too far behind, I just-- I need to--”

“Hey, listen, it’s okay,” May leaned forward and placed a hand on his knee. “I’m not upset.”

“I’m not giving up,” Peter insisted. 

“I know you aren’t.”

“I think I just really need to be Spider-Man right now,” he said. “I need to prove to myself that not all tragedy is unavoidable.”

May shook her head, a fond smile taking the place of a reassuring one.

“You know,” she said. “Sometimes you say stuff like that and if I closed my eyes it could really be Ben.” 

Peter’s heart stuttered. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. 

“No, nothing to be sorry for,” she brushed him off. “Honestly, you were still such a kid when he died that I worried for a long time that he hadn’t been around long enough for you to really learn-- to absorb-- the sort of work he put into doing good. But then you say something like that…” she pushed a stray curl of hair out of his face fondly. 

“Do you remember when you were in the fourth grade?” she continued. “You won that district-wide photo contest for the elementary schools and you were supposed to go to this big ceremony to accept your award.”

“Yeah.”

“You agonized over it for _weeks_ you were so nervous,” May smiled softly at him. “So scared out of your mind that Ben was going to walk up to the podium with you so you wouldn’t have to go alone.”

Peter ducked his head at the memory, too warm in his stomach. 

“And we were there for you, he was all ready to hold your hand and walk up on that stage and, I’ll never forget this,” she shook her head. “You looked us right in our eyes and said _I want to do it on my own.”_

There were tears in May’s eyes now, and maybe there were tears in Peter’s too because he never really could watch her cry. 

“You do whatever it is you need to do to get through this,” May cradled his face in both of her gentle hands. “But I don’t care how old you are, I’ll always be here to hold your hand when you need me to.” 

May always said that she felt lucky she’d been dusted. It meant she never had to mourn her child, never had to grieve the way so many parents had. The way MJ’s mom had grieved for her or the way Tony had grieved for Peter. The way the Leeds family was grieving now. 

In response, Peter always figured it was a very _Parker_ point of view, the way they could cling to gratitude in the face of unspeakable tragedy. 

_My parents are dead, but at least I have an aunt and uncle who love me._

_Ben is gone, but at least he taught me how to be good._

_I lost another civilian in an apartment fire, but at least she was the only one._

_My best friend got his spinal cord snapped in a car accident but at least I got so many years with him, but at least it happened fast, but at least, at least, at least--_

“I love you, May,” Peter said with a quiet snuffle, pulling her into a hug. 

“I love you too.”

At least he had that. 

*

_“How do you think you get your name on one of those benches in Central Park?”_

_“I think you have to be rich. Donate a bunch of money or something.”_

_“You want a bench to say ‘Ned Leeds’ that badly?”_

_“Yes, MJ, if you must know I think it would be cool.”_

_“It would have to be something better than just your name though. Need a title.”_

_“Exactly, thank you, Peter. See, he gets it.”_

_“The Incredible Ned Leeds.”_

_“In Honor of Computer Genius Ned Leeds.”_

_“Idiot: Ned Leeds. Featuring, fellow idiot, Peter Parker.”_

_“Hey!”_

*

Over the years, Peter had made a number of ever-fluctuating adjustments to his spider-suit, starting with streamlining the number of web shooter combinations that were _actually usable, Tony_ and going everywhere from tiny speakers that would blast the theme song from that animated web series being made about him in Japan for a good laugh to inflatable water wings because he kept getting dropped in large bodies of water unprepared. 

When he was seventeen, Peter enlisted Ned’s help in upgrading Droney, specifically so they could install a camera and get wicked cool Spider-Man action shots. It had been just as awesome as they had expected, and had even become lucrative when they realized various online publications were more than willing to pay them for such rare photographs. 

They were careful about it, never selling to the same site twice, doing so under a pseudonym, and then spending the spare cash on movie tickets and Mother’s Day gifts. 

Peter, recent college dropout and emotionally rocky at best, stopped caring about whether or not he was being reckless with his identity the March after Ned died. 

He knew that while most publications only cared about pictures of Spider-Man after something newsworthy had happened, there was one in particular that would be writing about him year-round, no matter what. 

So, Peter Parker went and got himself a job at the Daily Bugle. 

*

J. Jonah Jameson was an asshat. 

It wasn’t a surprise, considering that was sort of his whole _thing,_ but Peter definitely would have left in his first week if he wasn’t getting paid so well. MJ made it clear that she wished he still would; she hated the _Bugle,_ she hated that he was pimping out his own image, so much so that she refused to step foot inside the building on the days they would eat lunch together. 

But the work of it changed Peter’s everyday considerably, gave him the shock to his system and the forced reset for which he had been searching.

“I swear I will match-- I will double whatever he’s paying you to take back your R&D internship and quit this ridiculous job.”

Peter groaned and let his head fall onto the kitchen table. 

“I’m serious, kid,” Tony continued. “I support you taking time off school, I support you wanting to have a job, but _this?_ ”

Peter lifted his head and shared a sympathetic look with Pepper who just shrugged. And there he was, hoping maybe she’d take his side on this one. 

“The whole point of this,” he said slowly. “Is so I can explore something that’s not STEM related.”

“Alright,” Tony threw his hands up. “Pep, you’ve probably got some spots to fill through summer, right?”

“I’m not involving myself in this,” Pepper said wisely, but didn’t move to leave the table or put down her cup of tea. 

“Because you know I’m right,” Tony responded pointedly. 

“ _Tony,”_ Peter bemoaned. 

“This guy has been dragging your name through the mud since you were fourteen and you’re just okay helping him out with that?”

“The paycheck he gives me goes to supporting Spider-Man’s livelihood,” Peter laughed with a hint of disbelief and a bucket of exasperation. “You can’t honestly tell me you don’t think that’s even a little bit funny.” 

It wasn’t Peter’s entire reasoning, it wasn’t the strict deadlines without strict hours or the drastic change in job to match a drastic change in self, but Peter hoped it would get Tony off his case nonetheless. 

“Oh, so it’s for the joke, of course,” Tony deadpanned. “The amount of self respect in that is truly unbelievable.” 

“Come on,” Pepper scoffed with a laugh. 

“I thought you weren’t involving yourself?”

“I’m not,” she said. “But, unrelated, I am going to point out that when you were twenty years old you were doing a whole lot worse than working for a tabloid.” 

Peter leaned back in his chair smugly and pointed at Pepper as Tony rolled his eyes at the pair of them. 

“It’s not fair when you gang up on me,” he said. 

Pepper and Peter shared a look and a low five under the table. 

*

_“Hey, dude, you know I love you right?”_

_“Yeah of course, I love you too.”_

*

Winter turned into Spring, and Peter took pictures of the places where weeds grew up through concrete sidewalks outside of the comic book store he and Ned had once frequented. 

He took pictures of foot-hold dents in dumpsters and the abandoned warehouse where Ned had tried to convince Peter to reenact that one Kevin Bacon scene from _Footloose_ but _with more flips._

He took pictures of every spot, every moment, every feeling he could get his hands on.

He took pictures because he wanted to show the world how it had felt before he forgot. He was so very scared that he was already forgetting. 

*

“And then he said-- you’re not gonna believe this,” Peter said as he and MJ trudged up the steps of her apartment building. 

“Did he tell you that your, quite frankly, _so-good-they’re-identity-revealing_ photos were, in fact, _not_ good enough?” MJ deadpanned. “And that you need to bring in different, _better_ photos?”

“Okay, so you will believe it,” Peter leaned against the wall as MJ dug through her backpack for her keys. 

“You’re an idiot.”

She unlocked the top lock, then the bottom one and pushed the door open with her hip, Peter trailing her close behind. 

“I’m giving him _masterpieces,_ Em,” he groaned as he let the door fall shut behind him and promptly locked it before MJ could ask. “Truly just golden publication opportunities.”

“Okay, Annie Leibovitz,” she smirked at him over her shoulder before going to the kitchen table and beginning to sort through a stack of mail. 

“I’m just saying,” Peter fell onto the couch dramatically, making himself well and truly comfortable. 

“Do you really not see what the problem is?” MJ asked with a quirk of her brow. 

“No?”

“You’re making yourself look too _good,_ Peter,” she laughed. “This is the guy who writes weekly articles about how Spider-Man is a terrorist and your shots make you look downright saintly.” 

Peter grinned at her cheekily. “You think I look good?” 

“I swear to God, one of these days I’m gonna…” she trailed off, staring at a bright green envelope in her hands and face falling into a familiar, disconnected mask. 

Peter scratched at an itch at the back of his neck. 

“MJ?” he asked, but she just sat down heavily in a kitchen chair and kept staring at that same green envelope. 

Suddenly on high alert, he pushed himself up off the couch and walked carefully towards the kitchen. 

“Hey,” Peter said softer, pausing a few feet away from the table. MJ’s hands were trembling ever so slightly. “Are you okay?” 

She moved a finger under the flap of the envelope, tugged a little too aggressively, and pulled her hand back in one disjointed movement as it tore a little too far. 

“Em…”

“Open this for me?” she held it out to him without meeting his eye, and Peter was thrown off-kilter by the utter uncertainty in her gaze, in the line of her shoulders, in that ongoing tremor of her hands. 

He took the offered card and as he looked down at the scrawled return address, finally understood. 

“Christ,” he mumbled to himself as he fell into the seat next to MJ. “Did this just come?”

“I have almost the same address as someone in the next building over,” she responded quietly. “Sometimes it takes a while for the issue to get sorted.” 

“You want me to open it?” he rested a gentle hand on top of one of hers where it was clenched on the tabletop. He could see her actively trying to relax it. 

“Please.”

Peter nodded and pulled his hand away so he could carefully, oh so carefully, pull the envelope apart while keeping it intact as much as he possibly could. And then he handed it back to MJ, and he watched her open it up and start to read what was inside, crumbling bit by bit all the while. 

He may not have known what was written inside, but he knew what a Christmas card from Ned Leeds did to a person’s heart, and he was far from surprised when MJ dropped it on the table and pushed herself to her feet with a broken sob. 

She covered her mouth with a hand and hummed a frustrated sound into her palm. 

“Okay, breathe,” Peter said as he stood up to face her head-on.

“I’m-- I just--”

Peter reached out a hand, desperate to hold onto her, to soothe her in some way from this, but she flinched away and pushed her back up against the refrigerator. 

“Don’t-- Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t--”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Peter tried to keep his voice steady but tears were burning shameful rivulets down his cheeks too now and he didn’t know how to _fix it,_ why couldn’t he just _fix it?_

What was the point in being a fucking _superhero_ if he couldn’t save them from a night like this? 

“I’m right here. I’m right here with you,” he continued, just a few feet away as MJ wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her chin into her chest and finally _felt_ everything that she had been suppressing. Peter wouldn’t have been surprised if it was the first time she was really letting herself cry over Ned, letting herself accept that there was really no getting him back this time. 

It would make sense, the delayed response, not just because of the way MJ personally processed things, but also because she didn’t see Ned every day the way Peter did. She saw him on holiday breaks and long weekends in New York and maybe, right at the start, it had just felt like an extra long gap between visits, that he would be coming back soon enough. 

But then he never made it back. 

“I don’t know how to _do this,”_ MJ croaked in such a broken tone that Peter had to clutch hard at his own hands, and also had to check his own strength so he didn’t accidentally break any fingers. “It’s not fair-- It doesn’t make any _fucking sense!_ He texted me that morning-- He-- He sent me some moronic Twitter thread and I didn’t even respond-- I didn’t-- I didn’t--”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Peter shook his head, crying in earnest now. “I understand, but I hate that you have to-- I hate that this has to be a nightmare for you too.” 

MJ looked at him, still crying as she wiped at her swollen, snot-covered face, and their shared grief met somewhere in the open space of the kitchen between them. It wrapped around itself, gnarled in some places and missing entire pieces in others, and it danced an expression of mutual agony. 

“You can…” MJ took a deeper, albeit still unsteady breath. “Please touch me now, Peter. Please…”

Peter had her in his arms and his lips pressed to her forehead with a muttered _thank God_ faster than either one of them cared to quantify, because all that mattered as the orange sunset filtered in through the kitchen window, mottled by lace sheers, was that they could match their breaths to each other’s. 

That they could breathe at all. 

*

They curled up in MJ’s bed and fell asleep in each other’s arms. 

“I love you,” Peter said later, after the sun began to rise and they had finally gotten through the night. “I’ll be here for you in whatever way you’ll have me.” 

“I want all of you.”

*

“Daddy says you’re taking a break from school.”

Peter breathed in sharply through his nose. Babysitting Morgan Stark had a tendency to be a larger bite than he could chew on the days when the tension in his head started to rebuild itself. 

“Yeah,” he said awkwardly. “It’s, uh… complicated.” 

“When I was little--”

“Little- _er,”_ Peter chimed in, earning himself a comically offended look that reminded him so desperately of Pepper. 

“When I was a _baby,”_ Morgan insisted. “There were times when Dad had to take breaks too-- because he missed you so much.” 

Peter’s heart clenched. He and Tony had had a sum total of two conversations of how it had felt for Tony to watch that teenager that Peter could hardly relate to anymore turn to dust. 

Peter knew that it had been rough, knew that he had offered up even more trauma to a man with one of the largest guilt complexes in the universe, but wasn’t always certain that Tony’s hardship had been about anything more than that. Not until Pepper and Morgan had started mentioning off-handedly the way that Tony had grieved-- for the universe yes, but also for _him_. 

“You’ll be okay though,” Morgan said. 

Peter found that he almost believed her.

*

Spider-Man sat with his feet dangling off the roof of Midtown High and looked out past the football field, past the bleachers, and towards the small playground it shared with the elementary school. 

Even from so far away he could hear a swing creaking on its chain, the wind as it rushed down the slide.

He picked up his Minolta, cranked the film forward, and lifted it to his eye to snap a picture of the place it all began as the sky turned indigo. 

*

_"Everything's more complicated now that we're old."_

_“We’re not old.”_

_“We’re downright ancient.”_

_“Peter, come on! We’re just getting started.”_

*

Abby Leeds was five years old when Peter met her for the first time. 

She had clung to her older brother with all the wide-eyed admiration of a proper little sister and Peter, who had spent nine years as an only child, found her charming more than annoying. Ned would push her out of the room when they were building Lego sets or watching a movie, but Peter would bring her stickers from the nurses’ station at May’s job and ask her about what she was learning in school until Ned realized he didn’t need to be embarrassed of the little girl wrapped around his ankles. 

At some point, Peter had started feeling a certain amount of brotherly protectiveness for Abby, another member of his ever-growing, ever-unconventional family. 

He couldn’t protect her from the loss of her brother, but he could buy her lunch. 

“Tell me about school,” Peter said, legs tucked up in the seat of the sticky booth with him. 

“Y’know,” Abby shrugged. “Junior year.” 

She was swirling a straw in her drink, around and around and around to create a tiny, fizzy whirlpool. Peter knew she’d missed a chunk of class at the beginning of the semester and was forcing herself to catch up so she could still graduate with all her friends in a year. He thought maybe Abby Leeds was the strongest one of all of them. 

“My offer still stands, you know,” Peter said seriously. “I’ve recently found myself with a lot of extra free time, so if you ever need homework help--”

“I know, I know,” she brushed him off with a wave of her hand and a familiar exasperated smile. “This isn’t a role you need to fill,” she stole a fry off of his plate. “Ned never helped me with my homework.” 

Peter squinted at her and took an onion ring in retaliation. “Is it too soon for me to joke about how Ned barely did _his_ homework?” 

Abby snorted. “If we can’t joke with each other about all this, then I don’t think we can at all,” she deadpanned. 

Peter hummed in agreement. “Fair enough.” 

Abby’s smile faltered as she went back to spinning her straw, shoulders slumped and a contemplative twist to her eyebrows. 

“I wanted to give you something,” she said. 

“Yeah?” 

She reached into her backpack and pulled out a laptop covered corner to corner, edge to edge in four years’ worth of stickers. Peter knew that laptop. Peter had gifted at least a third of the stickers on that laptop. 

“I’ve been sifting through some of his files,” Abby said as she placed it carefully in between them. “Just… looking for pictures and messages and things that his friends might want.” 

“That’s… yeah, okay,” Peter nodded, unable to tear his gaze away from the computer. 

“He was working on something,” Abby continued. “For Spider-Man.” 

Peter’s eyes shot up, wide and nervous and too aware of what it sounded like when someone had found him out. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually _revealed_ his identity to anyone, only confirmed questions and theories. 

“Okay,” he said carefully. Abby was unfazed. 

“It’s… I don’t have a lot of coding experience, but I did some research and…” Abby shook her head in quiet disbelief. “I’m pretty sure it’s an A.I.” 

Peter gaped at her. “Ned was making an A.I. for-- Spider-Man?” 

Abby tapped the lid of the laptop with her index finger. 

“Under a file called _Queens’ Guard,”_ she smiled solemnly. “There are tons of notes. He called it Queenie for short. It looks like it was meant to be used while Spider-Man is out of his suit just, being a guy trying to do good.” 

Peter wanted to cry. That was the thing at the forefront of his mind as he sat across from young Abby Leeds and tried to process this new information, this thing that was not only proof of how much Ned had loved him but a connection Peter had to him even now that he was gone. 

“You’re giving it to me?” Peter asked hesitantly. 

“Figure you can get it where it’s supposed to go,” she raised an eyebrow knowingly. 

“Thank you, Abby,” Peter said, all earnestness and heart. “Seriously.”

Abby nodded shakily, unreadable emotion in her eyes. “Just-- Make him proud please.” 

Peter took a deep breath and felt the weight of his loss being propped up slightly on something else, a new purpose. He held Abby’s gaze with a rediscovered steadiness. 

“I’m trying.” 

*

_“Don’t look at me like that.”_

_“Like what?”_

_“Like you’re mad at me.”_

_“I_ am _mad at you.”_

_“No you’re not.”_

_“...No I’m not.”_

*

Peter may or may not have been stealing.

In all fairness, Tony Stark _did_ give him total access to his personal lab when he was sixteen years old and had never finished the Ground Rules tour that got interrupted by a lizard man in Brooklyn on Peter’s first day there. 

So. Maybe he was just using the resources available to him and _not_ committing theft of the very impressive StarkWatch prototype currently under his scrutiny. 

Peter studied the newly working code on the monitor in front of him. Someone had done beautiful work here, and when it was all said and done Peter knew what a genuinely useful product it was going to be, so he made sure that it was backed up in about seven secure places before saying:

“Friday, wipe this watch clean please. We’re starting from scratch.” 

He hooked up Ned’s laptop to Friday’s system and got to work. 

*

The drill whirred in Peter’s hands, but the rest of the park felt as if it had been blanketed in a respectful quiet. Summer was blooming in the city and the air was tinged with warmth even as the sun fell behind the skyline. 

“How do you think he would’ve felt about the whole destruction of public property thing?” MJ asked, legs curled up on the bench seat beside him. 

“Since when do you care about creating nuisances for cops?”

“I’m asking if _Ned_ would condone it,” MJ snorted. 

Peter looked down at the small, laser-engraved plaque that he was currently affixing to a bench deep down their favorite path through Central Park. _In Honor of Ned “G.I.T.C” Leeds,_ it read in a professional script. 

“’Course he would,” Peter said as he drilled the last screw into the wood. “Some kid is gonna stumble across this eventually and Google him, trying to figure out what the acronym stands for and get nowhere. We’re turning him into a regular urban legend.”

MJ smiled, real and sad and with a hint of hard-earned peace. 

“To ‘Cryptid’ Leeds,” she lifted the reusable coffee mug they’d filled with whiskey and carried there on the subway, taking a swig before handing it off to Peter to do the same. 

“To our guy in the chair.”

They sat there for a long time, as the warm orange glow of sunset turned indigo turned black and the whiskey in their bloodstreams turned their fingertips numb and their grief hot. 

There were no tears, just memories shared between the only two people left to share them, laughter had between the two people left to have it, love offered through time and space and death until they couldn’t stay for fear of bursting with it. 

MJ took Peter’s hand and led him home. 

*

“Okay,” Peter breathed. “Okay.”

He swiped through the notes that Ned had left on his laptop, scanned over the scribbles he’d made in his effort to finish this left-behind project, this final vessel of assistance from a young man with heart and enthusiasm to feed the world over. 

The coding of the thing was a work of art, even Peter could see that, _especially_ Peter could see that. The protocols available were personalized in a way that had Peter feeling utterly _seen_ in that empty laboratory, skin crawling with the lost familiarity of it all. 

Peter took a deep breath, and he hit ENTER. 

The watch cradled in his hands lit up with a glowing red behind a stark black spider web. He tapped on it twice, lifting a hologram of menu options into the air before him. Peter breathed in through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. 

“Hello? Queenie?” he began hesitantly. 

A beat, long as from here to the moon. 

And then. 

And then. 

And then.

“Hi, Peter. It’s nice to meet you. Can I help you with anything today?”

Peter felt his face go soft, his heart speed up, his lungs go still. That voice was the voice of most of the women he’d known growing up in Queens, with a hint of an accent that felt like trips to the market and Fourth of July cookouts and home. 

He sat down right there on the floor in the middle of the lab because he needed a moment to process the whole thing and remember how to _breathe._

Ned had created this for _him._

Peter loved him, Peter missed him, Peter needed him and in that moment there were tears in his eyes but he was _laughing._

“It’s nice to meet you too,” he said through bubbling tears and breaths, stuck somewhere between sobs and guffaws. “Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Please?”

“Of course,” Queenie said, a recognizable excitement somehow burned into her programming. “I was designed by Ned Leeds for the purpose of helping you so you can focus on helping the city of New York. I’m here to make things easier.” 

Peter started crying in earnest but he couldn’t stop smiling either. 

“I think we’ll make a good team,” he said, broken and mended in all the proper places. 

“I happen to agree, Peter.” 

He lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped down his flushed face, took a moment to himself, and then:

“Queenie?”

“Yes, Peter?”

“Pull up the MIT course booklet for Fall semester,” he said. “I have some scheduling to catch up on.” 

*

_“This is Ned Leeds! Well, this is my voicemail so, you know, leave a message if you want me to respond otherwise I probably won’t! Thanks, bye!”_

*

Peter spent the last two weeks of July at the Stark lakehouse, grilling on the back porch and tinkering in the garage and sitting for as long as he could manage at the bottom of the lake. 

May came out to visit with Happy, as did MJ, and Peter almost felt back to normal before he realized that there was no such thing. There was only the here, the now, the new and daily opportunities for change and growth-- and, yes loss-- but also joy, so much fucking _joy_ as to fill Peter Parker up to the brim. 

“I decided to go ahead and get that train ticket to Cambridge for Halloween weekend,” MJ said as they sat on the end of the pier and watched Tony spray his daughter in the back of a head with what had to be a custom water pistol. 

“Really?” Peter’s eyes lit up with the shine of the sun hanging high above them. 

“If I’m gonna get a tour of a university I have no intention of ever intending, you’re gonna make it a ghost tour for me,” she looked at him in that way that made everyone else uncertain of her sincerity and made Peter want desperately to kiss her. 

“Oh, Ned made sure we knew where all the haunted spots were when we moved in,” Peter said and his throat tightened up but his hands remained steady. “I can _do_ a ghost tour.” 

He wrapped an arm around MJ’s shoulders and pulled her close enough to kiss the top of her head as she rested a hand on his knee. They were warm up against each other and everything was peaceful for a moment until they were getting splashed by both Starks and dragged into the lake. 

Then it was just peaceful in a different way. 

*

_“I’m so happy right now.”_

_“You’re drunk right now. Jesus, four days into college and we’re so, so drunk.”_

_“Drunk and happy though. And together.”_

_“Yeah. S’good.”_

*

“Are you still sad?” Morgan asked on a Thursday during that week in the late summer, gardening behind the lakehouse and covered in mud and grass. Morgan, who was now nine years old, who was hope and laughter and light, who was borne of tragedy in an era of the earth which Peter would never see. 

“Not in the way that I was,” Peter said. “But, yeah.” 

“Aunt May says being sad is a part of being happy,” Morgan continued, blissfully unaware of how wise beyond her years she was, of how young and old and eternal she made Peter feel. 

“She’s pretty smart,” he nodded. “We should probably listen to her.” 

“So, you’re allowed to be sad, but not sad all of the time,” Morgan said succinctly. “You have to leave room for the happy to get in too.” 

“I’m happy right now,” Peter grinned at her and dropped a handful of dirt in her lap. Morgan laughed and rubbed it further into the mess that was her overalls. 

“You have to be happier _more_ though,” she insisted with the confidence her genetics demanded. 

“I’m getting there,” Peter said softly. “But for now, I’m glad to be happy here. With you guys, and May, and MJ…”

He looked out at the yard, at the very people he was expressing gratitude for behind their backs as if it was a secret he was afraid would burst this little moment if it got out. Sharp around the edges, with points gnarled by loss and the intimacy of grief. 

They-- these joyful, angry, searching people-- were a gift in Peter’s life that he had never had to earn, had only ever had to cherish. He learned better every day just how to do so. 

“Well,” Morgan nodded to herself and picked herself up on her knees to continue the important work of finding worms. “At least there’s that then.”

“Yeah,” Peter breathed. “At least there’s that.” 

**_End._ **

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it all the way through I owe you my heart.
> 
> (p.s. I'm on tumblr @ premiere-pro)
> 
> edit: thank you so much to all you lovely people who are leaving comments and kudos, it's making me feel all warm inside like some sort of sap <3


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